


technicolor

by alex4968



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: BDSM, Detective Harry, Detective Louis, Dom/sub Undertones, Explicit Sexual Content, Hate to Love, M/M, Murder Mystery, Psychic Abilities, crime and horror, descriptions of violence, harry uses his abilities in interesting ways to have sex, super slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:00:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 81,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15827772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex4968/pseuds/alex4968
Summary: When the small town of Twin Lakes begins experiencing a string of serial murders, a team of detectives is called in to help. Louis is the head of the team and meets a hard-headed psychic who everyone else seems to believe is the one who will solve the case.Louis isn't so sure.ORThe slow-burn, hate-to-love, crime au where Harry is a psychic, Louis is a detective, and the world is against them.





	1. Louis.

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE READ ME FIRST!!**
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> Hello friends!!  
> So, this is a crime and horror fic, so I will let you all know in advance that if anything from that genre is something you're not comfortable reading or are triggered by, then you should probably stay away from this fic. Things that are mentioned but not graphically depicted are: self harm and a suicide. The murders in this fic all happen to minor characters and are not graphically descriptive, except in their aftermath (as in being examined by the detectives). The boys get roughed up a little and hurt through the fic but the END GAME is NO major character death.  
> There is **no** rape/non-con in this fic, nor outlasting major character death.  
>  If there is anything in particular you are worried about and need to know if it is involved in this fic, 100% feel free to send me a message on my [tumblr](http://creamcoffeelou.tumblr.com/) or leave a comment below. As always, if you see something you think I should have mentioned here but did not (and is a common trigger) please let me know. I may have missed it. 
> 
> Also, a massive thank you to my betas, my groupchats, and to Lou in particular for letting me scream about this fic constantly for the 2.5 months it took me to finish. It's been an insane ride and I loved killing you all with my angsty ideas and thank you for listening <3

****

**LOUIS**

2016.

It’s a friday when Louis finds himself sitting in one of the cushioned seats of the jet he sees the inside of far too often. They’ve been in the air for nearly an hour, just long enough to get at a cruising altitude, when he stands and moves towards a screen.

Niall is typing away at his computer as images flash on the projector screen at the front of the plane, showing all of them the horrors that have been documented this time. “Sorry for not being able to do the briefing in the office,” He says to his friends around him, “I got an emergency help call from the Two Lakes police department in Oklahoma just before we took off. We currently have three victims,” Niall presses the button to display the three images behind him. “The first victim was fifteen year old Millie Kristen. She drowned.”

“Drowned?” Liam asks, “The police report said she was found nowhere near water.”

“We have reason to believe he’s transporting them post mortem and has a vehicle capable of doing so.” Liam nods.

“Our second victim was sixteen year old Jane Eyre, she bled out. And our most recent victim, fifteen year old Amy Lancaster disappeared from her bedroom in the middle of the night four days ago, and turned up this morning in the same park, twenty three miles from her house. She died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

“Was she the only one that was held for the four days?” Shawn asks, eyebrows furrowed.

“No, all three went missing exactly four days before they were found,” Louis says, sighing softly.

“So far, the only similarity between the victims is that they’re disappearing exactly four days before they turn up dead. Meaning, we may only have three days until our next victim shows up.” It’s a truth they must all have been thinking - but having a set deadline on life has always been something Louis has never handled well. It’s a kind of pressure he can never fully describe, yet the intensity of it settles deep in his muscles.

They all sit back in their chairs as the plane flies, taking everything in for a long while.

It’s three hours before they’re walking into the station at Two Lakes. The humidity in the air is wicked, sticking to his skin heavily, and the air conditioning inside is almost an instant relief.

“Agent Tomlinson, thank you for coming. Really, thank you.” Zayn Malik, the head agent of the Two Lakes police department, says. He’s got on a pressed black suit, and it almost looks half a size too big for him, like it’s not something that he wears every day. He assumes it’s not - small towns like this often don’t take the formalities that he does quite as seriously. Not when there’s so little reason to have to deal with families, with people in general.

It’s not a _small_ town, per se, but the population is just enough that there’s very little crime, not enough for them to have a sophisticated enough team to handle something like this.

“Of course. Thank you for having us,” He pauses, looking back at the team behind him. They’d all dropped their day bags off at their hotels before coming here, but each of them still has a bag filled with case files or laptops. “Do you have a place for us to set up?”

“Yeah, of course. You can use my office.” Louis nods as they all follow the detective down the hall, clacks of dress shoe heels against the linoleum floor.

“You have high success rates in solving cases,” Louis says, quirking an eyebrow as he looks at the certificates around the office.

“Ah, yeah. Some of these are from Los Angeles. I transferred about five years back.”

“Young transfer?”

“I got shot. Didn’t want to risk it on a day to day anymore. I thought -” Detective Malik laughs, a dry laugh as he runs a hand through his hair, “Thought I’d never see anything like this ever again.”

“We’ll figure it out.” The detective nods, and Louis only smiles just a bit.

The first crime scene brings them to a park fifteen miles out from the station.

The drive was long, with the entirety of the road surrounded by thick trees that completely blocked the visibility all around them. Only an occasional break in the tree line led to a hidden driveway off the path, and then it would go back to nothingness, hundreds of miles out where their unsub could have hidden these bodies for no one to ever find.

None of it makes any sense.

“This town’s mostly just full of people that came out here to retire. At least down these parts. It’s real quiet, the weather’s real tame, and usually people are happy here. We’ve never seen anything like this,” The officer that had driven Louis to the station says, attempting to make conversation.

“That’s what makes people like this so keen to do it in their small towns. They like to see the panic that it drives.”

“So, you think the fucker that did this lives here?”

“I have reason to think so, yeah,” Louis says, putting his sunglasses on as he starts towards where the body was dumped. It’s just past noon, with the sun high in the sky and the summer heat beats down on them with full, unrelenting force. The grass around them is green, full and already overgrown in some spots, with trees surrounding them.

“What’s your reasoning behind that?” The officer asks, just as they’re joined by the rest of his team.

“Well, the next major city over is more than an hour drive. If he wasn’t from here, if it wasn’t personal in some way or another, he wouldn’t take his time to drive all the way to this town, to abduct this town’s residents and murder them.” This makes the officer freeze, all questions seeming to have died on his tongue.

“Right,” is all he says in return, then.

“Our unsub easily could have hidden the bodies back further in the trees and no one would have found them,” Liam says, shaking his head. He has sunglasses on too, sharp and black to match the black of his suit jacket.

“I thought the same thing. He wants them to be found. Wants us to find them.”

“Why?” It’s a rhetorical question, none of them know the answer just yet, but it only eggs Louis on to keep looking. Just to the left, there’s a massive oak tree with a rope swing hanging from it, the shade casting a large area that looks well loved by the locals.

“Where exactly was the body?” He asks the officer, officer Corden, only to follow him less than a hundred yards into the park.

“Right here,” He says, motioning to an area in the grass where a white tent marked with a number _one_ sits. “A girl found her when she was out here runnin’. This is an awfully high trafficked area of this park.”

Louis takes a moment to try and envision himself on the scene, on the night that the man left her here.

It was dark - no one was out. Examination said she’d been dead for just over an hour when she was dumped, and just over seven when she was found at eight that morning. There’s no parking for over two hundred yards where the body was left - so the unsub is strong enough to have carried a hundred and twenty pound girl by himself, only to leave her in a specific spot.

“This spot must mean something to him. This park, in particular. All three bodies have been left here, right?”

“Not in this exact spot, no, but all at this park, yes.” Louis nods. It’s all a puzzle - the pieces will have to come together in one way or another, and everything will have to make sense eventually. Even if right now, looking in on someone else’s insanity, not a single part of it makes any sense.

They just have to solve it.

The only thing the team can figure out, as they sit in the meeting room together, is that the girls were all of a similar age, two fifteen year olds and one fourteen year old, and all dumped in the same place. Different ways of death, different times of death, and different lives completely.

Niall sits at his computer, still digging through text message and phone records of all three girls, their parents, and even their siblings.

“Anything?” Liam asks, after a while.

“No. As far as I can tell, not a single one of these girls or their families have ever even crossed paths other than the school.” Louis sighs, running his hands over his face. With such a tiny town having housed all of these girls, it made sense that they all went to the same school. There was only one in this city, the next being far enough over that even busses didn’t come out here to pick the kids up.

The white board in front of him has pictures of the girls when they were alive. School pictures that show their smiles and in their best clothes, the most authentic pictures they could ever get of someone school aged. Millie was blonde, with long hair and dark freckles speckled all over her entire body. She was a cheerleader at school, popular and happy from what her parents had said. Jane was clearly having a phase in her life, with short black hair and black clothes. Her parents said they worried she was depressed, but her social life was just fine. And the most recent, Amy, was just an average girl. Brown hair and blue eyes, but the type of person that everyone at school mourned over her, but Louis could tell none of them were her close friends.

All three of them led completely different lives, with not a single connection that he could see, and not a single thing that could cause an unsub to target them specifically.

“So, he’s targeting them randomly.”

“It seems that way.”

“This is going to cause a massive public panic. No one knows if their children are safe,” Shawn says with a sigh. “The media can’t get ahold of this.”

“I think it’s too late for that,” Bebe, their communications expert says. “Just because there’s already been three, I have a feeling someone’s likely already tipped off the media.” Louis sighs.

It doesn’t make sense - that someone could so senselessly kill children. He doesn’t understand it, but he just has to keep faith that they’re going to catch this monster and put him so far behind bars that he’ll never see the light of day again.

He knows there was no sign of sexual assault, no sign of anything like that. Which is the only thing he’s thankful for about any of this - as horrible as that may sound.

“There was no rape, right?”

“No.”

“Can we _really_ rule out a female unsub, then?” Liam asks as he looks down at the case files.

“We can’t completely rule that possibility out, but I think it’s unlikely, just because Amy Lancaster weighed one hundred fifty three pounds, I don’t know if a female unsub could lift and carry her as far into the park as she was found.” He gets a few nods in agreement, but not much beyond that.

It’s always the beginning stages of solving a case that are the most frustrating, that are the hardest to deal with because there’s so little knowledge they can go off. It’s the worst part of his job - he thinks - the not knowing.

The best part, of course, is the end of it all when he gets to lock the evils of the world away. That’s what makes it all worth it in the end.

“Agent Tomlinson?” A woman he hasn’t seen before walks in, wearing a black shirt with her badge attached to the sleeve.

“Yes?”

“Amy Lancaster’s parents are here. They said they wanted to speak to you.” He sighs softly, but nods as he excuses himself from the meeting table. It’s nearly sundown, now, and he hasn’t eaten since the night before, but he knows this is more important, knows that talking to the family and making sure they’re alright is the most important part of all of this.

He exhales softly, shaking the anxiety from his bones as he opens the door to the small room where the parents are sitting at a long meeting table. The room feels cold with the sadness radiating off of the parents that have now survived a child. The mother has tears running down her face, and the father, holding her hand tightly, has a scowl embedded so deeply into his face that Louis’ heart aches.

“Hello, Mr. and Miss. Lancaster. I am so, so very sorry for your loss.”

“Have you figured out who’s doing this?” The father asks, bottom lip wobbling as he speaks, only straying from the seemingly ever-present scowl for the duration of his sentence.

“Not yet, no,” He says softly, teeth scraping over the bottom of his lip.

"Then why the fuck are you still standing here? Why aren't you out trying to find the sick fuck who's done this to our baby girl?" The dad says angrily. It's a reaction Louis has long since been used to in his line of work, but it doesn't make it any easier. He hates that the parents have always had a tendency to blame him for the misfortunes of their children, but he knows the psychology around it. He's always understood that it's just easier for the parents to blame the person that's standing in front of them instead of facing the real evils that exist in the world. It's something he's done himself and he knows he'll see time and time again until the world is clear of the evils within it.

"I understand how awful this is. I understand what you two are going through right now, but we really are doing everything in our power to find the man who did this, and you'll be of the first to know once we do."

"Do you have children, detective?" The mother finally speaks, her eyes meeting his. They're red rimmed from the tears, making the brown of them shine bright.

"No, ma'am, I don't."

"Then no, you don't understand what we're going through." He nods curtly. It's another response he's gotten regularly. He wishes these people would understand that he really does get it - he sees it more often than he ever thought he would and the most haunting feeling in the world is knowing that there are parents in the world that have to bury their own children.

"Of course," He says, a peaceful response. "I know you're having a hard time right now, but would you two be alright if I asked you a few questions? It'll help us figure out who did this." The father nods, but the mother just presses her cloth against her eyes again, squeezing them shut as a few more tears fall.

"Okay," The dad says.

"Do you know what time she went missing?"

"Alyson works nights. She's a nurse," He says, gesturing to his wife, "So I'm the only one who stays home at night. Amy went to bed around ten, maybe a little later because she was working on her math homework after dinner and she was struggling with it, I think she had a test or something she was studying for." He sniffles just a bit, trying to keep his composure. "I went to bed at midnight. And I was up by six to wake Amy, and she was gone."

"So, between the hours of ten and six in the morning?"

"You think - you think he might have done it while I was awake?" The dad says in shock, the scowl falling from his face only to be replaced with one of despair, like he can't handle the news.

"No, I don't think that. But since you didn't see her between those hours, we can't rule it out completely." He nods, frowning, now. "Do you know what she wore to sleep?"

"Yeah. She was always a cold sleeper, so she always wore pajamas. She was wearing a yellow sweater and sweatpants, maybe an old boy band sweater, god I don't remember." The mother cries harder as her husband speaks, and Louis can't help the feeling of dread that puts in his stomach.

"Thank you, you've helped a lot. Please call me if there's anything else you think I need to know," he says, passing over his card to the couple. "And you're of course welcome to stay as long as you need." The father nods as the wife continues to cry, and they hug one another as he stands to leave the room.

So, she wasn't found wearing what she disappeared in.

He sighs.

"Detective Malik," He starts, walking into the detective's office. "Did the autopsy report on any of the victims say anything about sexual assault? I need to be absolutely certain."

"Yes, none of the victims were raped."

"Our unsub is changing their clothes before he dumps them." The other detective's eyebrows shoot up, shock written over his face clearly. "I think I need to call another team meeting, are you free for the next half hour?"

"Of course. This case is everything I'm worrying about right now." Louis nods and turns out of the office, immediately walking down towards the meeting room they've set up, before he pages his team.

Everyone shows up just shy of ten minutes later.

He delivers the news and a thick layer of silence spreads itself between all of them, the information sitting heavy in the air. "Remorse?" Liam asks, the only possible idea that Louis had thought of.

"None of these kills show remorse. The girls were left with their eyes wide open, facing upwards. I don't think this is remorse," Louis says, running a hand through his hair.

"What could it be, then?"

"Wait," Zayn says, looking at the board. "All of the girls were left wearing something very similar. Just asimilar enough that I think he didn't want us to notice, but look." Zayn stands, walks over to the whiteboard at the front of the room and points at a picture of one of the girls while she was alive - Jane. In the picture she's wearing all black, with heavy eyeliner on her eyes and silly doodles drawn on her arms with sharpie to mimic tattoos. Then he draws their attention to the picture of her while she was dumped.

The picture shows her in a light yellow tee shirt and blue jeans, her hands still resting on her stomach just like all the other girls had.

Without Jane, the clothes that the girls had been dumped in likely wouldn't have been drawn to their attention - since it was almost the style all of them stuck to.

Yet, every single one of them are wearing a light, pastel colored tee shirt and blue jeans in the crime scene photos.

It's something Louis isn't entirely sure if they should take as a message or just something that the unsub has done out of ease. The easiest option would have been leaving the girls in the clothes they were all wearing when he abducted them - but with three times proof that he's not doing that, it's clear that there has to be some kind of meaning behind the deliberate action. Perhaps there could be a shred of remorse to it - or maybe women's clothes are just easy to come by in that exact combination in this town. Perhaps it was just out of some kind of odd hygiene practice while he was holding the girls for the days that he suspects he was holding them.

He knows that all of the wounds that were found on the girls were spread out through the days that he held them. The bruising patterns that showed on all of their bodies showed that they were spread out, mixed throughout the days that Louis assumes that he's holding these girls. He sighs again, "Were they all bought from the same place?" The question doesn't come easily. If they were all purchased from the same shop, the likelihood of this being a message is so much greater, and that doesn't sit well in his stomach at all.

"I'll message the examiner," Detective Malik says, pulling out his phone and typing away quickly, before shoving it back into his pocket. "But really, if that's something we can consider a connection, we still have to figure out why he's killing these girls in such drastically different ways."

"Well that's the question of the hour. I'm pretty sure if we figured that out, we'd solve the case," Another cop standing in the back of the room says, rolling his eyes with a little laugh.

"Is there something funny about this to you?" Louis snaps, looking at the officer with a glare. "None of this is funny. Keep your comments to yourself unless they're helpful." The man glares at him, but Louis  has always been firm on keeping his work space productive - and an unhelpful deputy is nothing near helpful.

The room fills with a pregnant silence for a long moment, before Shawn exhales heavily. "So, all of the murders are done differently." He notes, once again. "But none of them have been hesitant." Louis furrows his eyebrows as he looks over every crime scene photo once again, and he realizes that Shawn is right. Not a single one of the kills show signs of remorse in the kill - they're almost over killed. It reads like the unsub is angry, but he can't even begin to understand what these girls could have done to inspire such anger inside of their unsub.

"Do you think they're substitutes for the person he's really angry with?"

"I think that's the only thing it could be."

"It's almost like he's experimenting with them," Zayn says with a sigh, shaking his head. "Why?"

The clock strikes seven o'clock, and Louis is ready to go home.

"I don't think we're going to get anymore questions answered tonight."

"Yeah. I think we can call it a day,"  Louis says, sighing as he closes out of the tab on his tablet that has the details of the case on it. It's always stressful when cases drag, when the days upon days of working eighteen hour shifts hit him hard and the exhaustion feels like it's embedding itself into his brain.

"Drinks, anyone?" Zayn offers as he shrugs on his jacket. "There's a bar down the street that gives cops a good discount." A few people agree, including Shawn and Niall, but Louis declines. Drinking on the job is something he's never been able to do without some kind of guilt washing over him. Something about enjoying himself or having a night out when he's meant to be dedicating every ounce of himself to figuring out why people's children, friends, siblings are showing up dead has never sat well with him. He's talked about it with Liam before, had the discussion that it's just important to look after himself as it is to pay attention to the case, but it still doesn't feel right.

Maybe one day he'll be able to let it go, but for now, he can't.

He goes out to his car, the humidity still sticking to his skin even after the sun has long set. It sticks to him everywhere, leaving a constant feeling of being sticky on his skin, and he hates it. It's only temporary, he reminds himself as he turns the air conditioning on in the car and starts his drive towards his temporary home.

Louis sits in his hotel that night, and he’s not sure what comes over him when he feels the need to switch the news on. The Twin Lakes local station is shared with the city an hour drive out, but they have their own short segments that they include in with the bigger city, he learns as he watches.

But it isn’t until ten o’clock on the dot that a woman appears on the screen, the bold writing on the bottom of the screen text that reads _Clockwork Murder case has a new victim!_ And Louis tenses up.

He’d known that the media would likely go crazy with the story as soon as they heard it, especially in such a small town where nothing ever happens.

Even after having Bebe talk to all the stations and ask them to blacklist the topic, it seems as soon as one has discussed it, they all take that as free range to talk about it all they want. It leaves a bitter taste in Louis’ mouth.

“The Clockwork Master, as detectives are calling him, says our source, has struck again in the early hours of friday night,” The woman on screen says, and Louis groans. Giving him a name can only egg him on, make him feel more in control, and yet, the news outlets have never cared. He knows the only thing they care about it having a story to tell, and yet they could care less that their coverage could lead their unsub to escalating, could make him kill another innocent girl with the power trip it could give him. “We don’t yet have a name of the most recent victim, but our sources are telling us that all victims are falling between the ages of fourteen years old and sixteen years old. It appears that none of the girls had a connection with one another, but detectives are still investigating.”

The footage cuts to the last crime scene, where Liam and Zayn were there, looking things over again while Louis had been talking to parents once again.

He clicks the t.v. off, then, and lets his head fall back against the pillow behind him with a groan. Nothing about this case has turned out the way he’s wanted it to, the way he’s needed it to. Nothing about this case makes even the slightest shred of sense and he still has no clue how they’re going to catch the fucker guilty of any of this.

He tosses and turns in bed for the rest of the night, never quite able to try and get himself to sleep without his thoughts drifting off to the evil he’s supposed to be hunting.

Four days pass in a blur of constant speculation.

The speculation doesn't stop the next body that turns up. The fourth victim.

And so, the pattern establishes itself in a flurry of fear that strikes hard in the hearts of the town of Twin Lakes. It's something Louis has never dealt with before - at least not at this level of severity. In a way, every killer has their patterns, has their tells, has the things that has always been the thing that leads them to finding them in the end; but, this has been different. Nothing about this case has been textbook, not a single thing about it has been anything that Louis has expected and it's wearing him down.

The feeling of being helpless, of losing the fight against an unknown enemy is overwhelming. It could be any person in the town - and even with a town this small, having a few thousand suspects is still far too many. Not a single one of them have been able to form any kind of possible pattern aside from the idea that the girls could be a surrogate for the true anger, but none of it makes any sense. Nothing about killing children makes any sense.

It almost makes more sense when the end game is that the killer was attracted to the children and killed them as some form of release - but now, with nothing like that in sight - none of it makes any sense. It's frustrating in a way he's never experienced, and the hard reality that there's going to be another body in four short days grinds on his nerves harder than anything ever has.

He's sitting back in the meeting room, surrounded by what he considers the most brilliant minds in their industry, and yet none of them are finding answers. It's even worse when he realizes that the frustration is spreading his entire team thin, as well as every other officer at the station. No one wants to see a fifth body. No one wanted to see one, let alone four, and now they have to figure out everything in their power to stop the fifth from turning up.

The sun is sleeping yet again when detective Malik pulls him aside before he can leave for the evening. There are three days until the next body shows up. Three days. "Agent Tomlinson," He says, stepping outside into the ever-hot air alongside Louis.

"Please, call me Louis. At least when we aren't working." The other man smiles just a bit, the corner of his mouth just tugging up ever so slightly.

"Right, and me Zayn, then."

"What's up?"

"I um, I know of a resource that I really think could help us solve this case. I didn't want to use it earlier, because I figured you all would have a very specific method you used to solve cases, but if I'm not speaking too boldly, I think you're just as lost and frustrated with this psychopath as I am." Louis sighs. Hearing it outloud that he's failing these people, that the killer is outsmarting him, is not something he's ever wanted to hear. It hurts - it hurts more than he ever thought anything would. And the worst of it all is that it hurts so bad only because it's the truth.

"What is it, then?"

"Well, it's a person I know. The smartest person I know, actually. He's um, he's helped us solve quite a few cases before. Obviously minor things, petty theft, a rape once. But I don't think there's any harm in at least trying, maybe?"

Louis can't think of any reason he wouldn't have used this resource already, if he really trusted it, but he knows the other man is right when he says that he's desperate, now, to solve this case. He doesn't have a family to go home to, but he knows Liam does, Bebe does. Shawn has a dog to go home to. They're all itching to go home, though. Being away from home is exhausting for anyone, but when they can never tell when they're going to be able to go home it only makes it so much worse. They're all needed at all hours of the day on jobs like this, so leaving is completely out of the question. They just have to stay and stick it out.

"Anything that will this fucker off the streets, Zayn. Anything you know, you pull it out now, because you know as well as I do that the clock isn't on our side on this one." Zayn only nods.

Morning brings another stale, Starbucks coffee and the after effects of another night of restless sleep. He misses his local coffee shop down the street from his own flat, but a town this small doesn't have the need for anything like that, and even the Starbucks only ever seems to have one barista at the counter at any time of the day.

They've never investigated a murder in such a tiny town, and it's throwing him off. He feels trapped, stuck in a small, twenty mile radius that holds all the answers he needs just ever so slightly out of reach. He finds himself looking critically at everything he sees - at everyone he speaks to or passes by on the street. He finds himself scouring the local newspaper when he's meant to be sleeping and digging through social media that he knows Niall has already been through time and time again.

Frustrated doesn't even begin to describe what he feels towards this case.

He's only been in this tiny town for eight days and it feels like eight too many. Two murders with four days in between and he feels like he's losing his mind.

He takes another sip of his coffee before he walks into the station and is immediately greeted by Zayn. "Good morning," he says, giving a friendly smile.

He's never really felt the need to get friendly with the staff at the stations he's worked at in the past, but there's a gnawing feeling in his gut that this case is going to be drawn out much longer than any of them anticipate, and that worries him. He knows his only chance of surviving it is being friendly with those that aren't his team.

"Morning," He says, sighing. "When are we going to speak to your friend?"

"I let him know we'd be there in about twenty minutes. So, I suppose we should head out now." Louis nods, following the other man out to his car, a beat up old thing that Louis assumes is from the seventies, and gets inside. It smells a little like old cigarette smoke that's retired itself inside of the cloth of the seats, and he wrinkles his nose just a bit as he tries to get used to the smell. Zayn gets in, too, and doesn't seem to take notice of it. Louis puts his seatbelt on as Zayn pulls out of his spot without a word, getting onto what he thinks they consider a freeway in their tiny town, and then they're cruising away.

Trees line the road.

They stand tall and ancient, at least forty feet above the road, and Louis can't help but wonder the history of it. Can't help but wonder everything that this town has been through, can't help but think about everything that this little place has experienced all at once without having any prior knowledge of how to deal with it.

There's always an atmosphere, when they get called out to places like New York or Los Angeles to solve a case. An air of, oh, not again, that surrounds the station. It's something he never thought he would get used to, the worry that it's just happening again, that there's another case that might go cold or might be solved. But here - all of this - its so, entirely different. Seeing how the people of the town are reacting to it, to something they've never experienced before and never expected to experience, it's heartbreaking. For the first time in his career, he almost thinks he would prefer the feelings that come with doing this in a big city.

"So, where are the twin lakes?" He asks, a lame attempt in making conversation in the silence of the car. The slot where the radio is meant to be is empty, the space where it once was just a hole in the center of them now.

"They're a bit of a hike up the mountain. They aren't twin, either. Not sure why the name is what it is. One of them is much larger, but they both do have the kind of water that's real crystal clear, you know? Where you can see from the bottom? I've been swimming up there a few times." He's not entirely sure how to respond to that, even though he's the one who asked the question. "You're really not used to all this small town stuff, are you?"

"No, not really. I was born and raised in New York. This is all... It's a lot, for me."

"I was raised in a town like this, just further down south. I know the city is different. Deals with all of it differently. That was hard for me to adjust to, too," Zayn says, pausing for a moment. "This is home to me, yeah? So you're not the only one who's affected by it, trust me." Louis just nods. Zayn has an air to him, something that comes off as unfriendly at first, almost cold, but when he finally got the chance to speak with him, Louis was quick to learn that it's not true. Perhaps sometimes first impressions aren't always the most important.

"Don't think I could ever live out here, like this. It's too quiet for me."

"Yeah, I think that's the best part."

"I bet the slow days are real nice, too. Mostly petty crime, yeah?"

"Most of the time not even that." There's a pause between them, then, and it feels like it stretches on longer than necessary, but it isn't awkward. He's not sure how Zayn manages that - creates all of the gaps of silence yet never once makes it feel awkward, like something's missing. "But that is something that, uh, that I think you all from the big city do need to understand."

"How do you mean?"

“When I called you out here, I was somewhat hesitant,” Zayn says, sighing softly.

“Why’s that?”

“When you live in a small city, you get a little caught up in your ways. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that not everyone does things the way you do, and when I realized that you lot would come in here and figure everything out without doing things the way we do, well, I was a little… uncertain.”

“And how exactly do you do things that we do differently?”

“We have an employee, the guy I was telling you about last night, my best friend, Doctor Harry Styles. He’s psychic. Sees things a whole world differently than either you or I do, and he’s helped us solve a lot of cases, like I said” Louis stares at him a moment, a blank expression on his face other than the raised eyebrow.

“Psychic? You’re kidding, right? Some sort of joke that you all must think is just absolutely hilarious.” He doesn’t know, exactly, what he’s expecting from the detective in front of him. Whether he’s expecting some kind of prank that his entire time has pulled on him or if this is just supposed to be some kind of painfully not-funny joke that Zayn’s department has chosen to pull on him.

“No. He’s - he’s real, as is his gift. That’s who we’re going to meet.” Louis stares blankly once again, unsure how exactly to process the information. He’d almost slowly considered Zayn someone he could trust, someone that was just as serious about this case as he was, but all of that dissolves away as he continues to drive.

"Are we going to the dump site?" He asks, eyebrows furrowed. The familiar stretch of road fans out in front of him as Zayn turns a corner. It's never a good thing when he becomes familiar with the route to a dump scene. He's never considered anything about that a good thing.

"Yeah, Harry's going to meet us there."

"Right," He says, trying not to let his frustration be clear in his words. He doesn't want to deal with this, doesn't want to think about this weird kind of small town magic that Zayn has clearly fallen for. He's read about this kind of thing - about the psychological phenomena that happens when there's something in small towns that people believe so truly, even when outsiders tell them time and time again that there's nothing there worth believing. It's almost clear that that's what's going on, that Zayn's just fallen into the trap of local lore, and now he's going to try and drag him through it, too.

He's not going to put up a fight, but he knows well enough that today's going to be a wasted day, for him.

He sends a text off to Shawn, _"Stay down at the station today. Out with Malik, not sure how long it will be."_

He gets a thumbs up emoji in response and can't help the little smile that creeps up on his face.

Zayn continues the drive in silence for the next ten minutes, before he's pulling into the small parking lot just outside of the park and turning the car off. He knows the walk to where the unsub has been leaving the bodies isn't far, but the heat that beats down on him at just barely nine in the morning makes it seem unbearable.

"Harry's down where the last body was left," Zayn says and Louis just nods. He can't help the ever growing feeling that he's wasting his time, that he should be down at the station with the people who he knows will help him solve this case, in the end, but he has to follow through, now. So, as they walk, he stays silent, once again just taking in the scene around himself, trying to envision himself as the unsub, trying to plant himself at the scene to see if anything triggers any kind of idea, any kind of revelation that could bring them any closer to solving this case.

Even something small at this point, just one step closer, would feel like a reprieve. Feeling so far with no idea when the end will come is something he can't handle much longer. He needs something, some kind of proof that they're getting somewhere with this.

But he knows he's not the only one that needs it. He knows the department needs it, too, or else they'll all be pulled from the case and it'll go cold and more bodies will go buried without cause. There's two days until they can expect yet another body to turn up, and that makes him angry. It makes him angry, makes him sad, and really, it scares him. It's terrifying to think that in less than forty-eight hours, if they haven't caught their killer, another set of parents will be without their child.

It's an intense feeling, like he has the only way to stop another senseless death from happening but he doesn't know how.

They're only missing one piece of the puzzle, but figuring out what that piece is is going to be the key to finally putting everything together. Now, it feels like clues stacked in a pile with a blurred reference, all while the answers are staring them in the face, a constant state of taunting, hanging just over their heads, out of reach. As soon as the final piece clicks, everything will fall together seamlessly, but he can only hope, now, that that happens sooner, rather than later. And the sooner, he hopes, happens within the next two days.

He pulls up the medical examiner's report on his phone and reads over it once again, quickly skimming the main points just to make sure he has everything fresh in his memory. He'd read over all the case files so many times now that he's nearly certain he could recite them in his sleep, but he's always been the type to make sure. To know everything before he opens his mouth to speak.

He looks up from his phone when they're finally at the spot where the body had been left. A jogger runs past them, his headphones in his ears as he runs a trail that Louis is almost surprised anyone is still running. But, he realizes, the fear in the town doesn't sit with those between the ages of twenty and thirty. The fear sits in two kinds of hearts: the teenagers and the parents.

Teenagers have to take this as a stark realization that they aren't invincible, that something could happen in the blink of an eye just the same way it's happened to the people around them. Parents have to realize that there's nothing they can do, sometimes, to protect their loved ones from the evils of the world.

When the media got ahold of the story, he knew it would incite panic. He watched as it did. Watched as parents packed up cars on last second vacations to get their families out of town, to make sure they were safe, just until the case was solved. It's died down now, just a bit, but he can feel the tension all around him. Can feel the fear, and it's painful.

Zayn speaks, finally, drawing him out of his daze. A man approaches them, with short, wavy brown hair that flows in little wisps all around his head. He's younger than Louis had anticipated - almost looks to be around his own age. He'd, for some reason, expected an older person, someone who would have been around long enough to incite the trust in the town's population to hold true in their hearts of his "gift".

But instead, in front of him stands a man that can't be a day older than twenty-five, and Louis is taken aback.

"Hi, Harry," Zayn says, and the man smiles warmly.

“SSA Tomlinson,” Louis introduces himself as, holding his hand out to shake his hand.

“Doctor Styles.” The man returns the sentiment, hands still tucked inside of his pockets with no motion to shake Louis’ outstretched hand. Louis drops his hand, and quickly tucks it into his own pocket, eyebrows dipping below the rims of his black sunglasses in distaste. The _Doctor_ looks nothing of his title, with his hair styled like a _hipster_ , and his _bright blue_ pants.

It’s clear, almost immediately, in the way the man holds himself that he’s certainly not an alpha male, and that he’s certainly not in charge of anything - but he’s comfortable. Comfortable enough in himself not to worry about the pedantics of meeting strangers. It throws Louis off kilter.

“Nice to meet you.”

“You as well.” He pauses, biting his bottom lip. “Zayn said he thought we would work well together, to figure out a crime scene.”

“Mm, yes, he did. Although I’m not sure what else there is to see that we already haven’t.”

“You studied behavior, criminology, perhaps even psychology, yes?”

“Yes, I’m not sure what that has to do with -”

“The core principle _I_ learned, even throughout my doctoral dissertation of criminal behavior, is that there’s _always_ something more, agent Tomlinson. I sincerely hope you don’t think you’ve seen everything, because that would mean you’ve seen the killer, and they’re not in custody, so I’m assuming that isn’t so.” Louis can only stare at him a moment, disbelief written over his features, but Doctor Styles has already started walking down the hallway towards where the bodies are, waiting for yet another analysis. For the first time in Louis’ life, he’s stunned silent.

Harry doesn't ride with them back to the station, but the second that they get there, he goes inside as if he's been there the entire time.

Louis isn't sure why this surprises him, almost entirely matching the way he'd acted at the park, yet it still surprises him. Even growing up in the city, he doesn't think he's ever met someone that has been like this.  Odd, interesting, and rude all wrapped up into a single, frustrating mixture. A part of him wants Harry to disappear. To go away and for things to go back to how they were when he wasn't working on the case. But the biggest part of him that wants nothing more than this case to be solved, the part of him that's willing to do anything to get this man put behind bars, is willing to let him help.

He's waiting for the moment to be able to call Harry out as a fake for this "gift", but Zayn had also said something about the man being smart - and he can't deny that, with a doctoral degree. It's clear that Harry is smart, but there's still little about him that makes Louis want to listen. He knows, in the end, he'll have to grit his teeth and bare it, but that doesn't mean it's something he considers himself excited to do.

It's not his station, it's not his town. It's just his case, and it's a case he intends to solve, with, or without, Harry.

He and Liam go to lunch later that day.

It's the first time since they've arrived in town that Louis has managed to fit a meal in that isn't fast food just on his way home after a long day at the station, and he can feel the way the bones in his ass feel more prominent against the hard wood of the chair from the lack of eating. It's not intentional, and he knows it's something he always does when he gets hyper focused, so he's grateful when Liam practically drags him out of the office and down the road to a cafe.

"What do you think of Harry?" He finds himself asking as he takes a bite of the burger he'd ordered.

"I think he's a bit odd, but I'm excited for how he's going to help us."

"Zayn told you about his..." He trails off, unsure how to phrase it.

"Yeah. I think that's incredible! Having something like that, I wish Zayn would have brought Harry in ages ago. Maybe we'd even have the case solved already." Louis quirks an eyebrow, mouth open in shock. He'd never thought Liam - Liam of all people - would believe in this. Ever since he'd met the other man, he'd always been the logical one. Always been the one that kept everyone else grounded when things got out of control. He'd always been the one that kept things realistic when sometimes the ideas that they pitched were anything but.

"You're not saying you believe in this, are you?"

"Do you not?"

"No, of course not! None of that shit is real. I can't believe they have you fooled already, too."

"It's not a trick, Lou. Well, I don't know for sure if Harry's is or not, but I've seen the effects of it, really. It's all rather amazing stuff, and I'm excited to see what Harry brings to the team."

"I feel like we're wasting time on him, giving him the time of day when there's going to be another body soon."

"Lou, no offence, but what were we doing that was going to stop the next victim? We've been stumped since the beginning, and fighting it has to come from a new angle. Sometimes logic doesn't work with these killers, because sometimes the evil they have doesn't match anything we've seen before. You know that, I know that, everyone does. Even if Harry's gift isn't real, maybe he can at least offer a new angle for us to look in at the case with, and we can use that to work off of and solve this."

Louis scrunches his nose, knowing all too well that Liam is right.

Liam is usually right, but he's never been a huge fan of admitting it.

"Yeah," he says after a while, just nodding his agreement. "Alright, you're right. I'll hear him out, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be super happy about it."

"None of us are happy to be here at all, Lou. This case is the worst I've ever seen. I just want it solved." Louis bites his lip. He knows Liam has a three year old at home, knows that he feels the cases that deal with kids harder than any of them. He knows that his friend is right.

"Yeah, you're right. We're gonna catch this fucker and put him where he belongs." Liam nods, a soft smile on his face.

Harry is still at the station when Louis gets back.

He's not sure why this annoys him as much as it does, but as he walks inside and immediately goes to the makeshift office he's been given during his time at the station. Liam gives him a look as he comes in, but through the window he can see Harry reading over the case files, and it aggravates him even more.

"We're all on the same team, Louis," Liam says, shaking his head just a bit as he places down the second cup of tea in his hands in front of Louis. The scowl immediately falls from his face when he remembers Liam is right, that there's no need, really, for him to be this angry about it. Perhaps he's still just angry with the way Harry treated him.

But there have been many times when he and his entire team have been treated like shit from the entire staff of a police department, so he knows that's not it. He knows exactly what it is, and he buries it deep inside of him. He can't think about it, so he buries himself in the case files.

The next day comes, and there's a foul mixture of anger at the killer and anger at Harry swirling around in Louis' mind. "Zayn said he thinks we should monitor all traffic at the park tonight, to see if we can catch the unsub while he's trying to dump." Louis' eyebrows shoot up at the idea, almost angry at himself for not thinking of it before. "Only issue is that there's almost eight roads that lead up into the park, so we're going to have to split up."

"SSA Tomlinson and I will take the main entrance," Harry says, a little smile on his face. There's nothing Louis can find that says friendly in the smile, and it makes something in Louis' gut twist. "Think it'll be nice to get to know each other."

But he knows he can't say no, knows he can't make a scene, so he just agrees.

The killer should dump another body in less than twenty hours, if he sticks to his course, and Louis is trying everything in his power not to let that happen. Officers are stationed all over the park at all hours of the day, and even more on the streets around the park.

They’re stopping every car that so much as turns on to the road that has any entry point to the park and questioning anyone that drives by. It’s a serious precautionary measure, one Louis has never taken in a case before, but it’s leaving the public with a slight sense of ease, that they’re increasing security as much as they can.

"So, I think the only patterns I can pick up on right now are the same ones you lot have picked up on." Harry says after nearly an entire hour of complete silence between them. The low drawl of his voice nearly makes Louis jump as the silence breaks.

"You're on the way to solving the case all on your own," He says, not bothering to keep his distaste away from Harry. It was clear that Harry had already made up his mind on what he thought of Louis from day one, from the moment they met and he decided to be rude. Louis feels no obligation to not return the favor. He sees the other man roll his eyes from the corner of his vision, and he holds in the scoff that threatens to come out of his mouth.

"'S just a shame that all these kids have to die."

Kids.

Kids.

Kids, he realizes.

They're all children.

"Yeah, yeah, kids. Do you remember how old they all were? I want to make sure I'm getting it right in my head."

"Yeah, 15, 16, 15, 14, 13."

"Right," Louis says, already pulling the phone up to his ear. "Niall? Yeah. I need you to pull up any significant events that have happened in this town with girls aged 14 or 15 in the last five years." Harry is looking at him again, but the smile on his face almost feels genuine.

It almost feels odd, seeing Harry almost look like he agrees with something he's doing. It's not something he expected to see or, really, thought he'd ever see at all. So it almost takes him aback for a moment when he first sees it, even as he hears Niall's voice over the other side of the speaker, he can't make out the words, just for a moment.

But he's back to reality before long, back to realizing where he is and what he was doing, back to trying to solve the murder case they've needed to solve for way longer than he thought they would have needed.

"Right, so there's a few car accidents, two with fatalities. One suicide. Um, a few reports of bullying, but those were all resolved it seems. One fight between two girls and one of them pressed charges for assault."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah, unfortunately." Louis groans, the idea that he thought was going to be brilliant, that he hoped would solve the case, flies away from him just as fast as it came to mind.

"Alright, Niall. Thank you. Let me know if you find anything else that you think is important."

"Will do, Boss!" Niall says before he hangs up. Louis tucks his phone into his pocket and turns back towards the road they've been watching for the last few hours. There's only been about ten cars that have passed by, and most of them were people Harry recognized. Six were parents taking their sons to a soccer practice that they all shared, and the last few were just random people who wanted to go to the park for their daily activities.

None of the cars had teenagers in them, though, and he really couldn't blame the parents for that.

"So, nothing came from that idea, then?" Harry asks, quirking an eyebrow at him as his eyes seem to scrape him over once again. His gaze has felt critical every time that Louis has been on the receiving end of it, and it's something he can't help but hate. He hates when people look at him and try to judge him, hates even worse when people pass judgement on him that he doesn't think is appropriate.

"Do you have any bright ideas, Dr. Styles? Because last I checked we're all still trying to find the same asshole who's doing this. I don't know about you, but it's not funny at all to me, and I don't appreciate you trying to make it into some kind of fucked up joke. We're going to get another body in just a few hours and then what? What have you done to aid this investigation other than stress me out even more?" He doesn't say anything to that, but he doesn't look at Louis angrily. Instead, something like guilt or maybe introspection flashes over his face. Louis takes a few steps away from him and leans back against a pole.

He could use a smoke.

It's been years since he's smoked regularly, having promised his sisters he would quit. But quitting turned into just social smoking and social smoking turned into stressful smoking. Now he finds himself turning to the stupid little things every time he feels any kind of unpleasant emotion and that's more often than not, as of late.

He exhales into the still hot, ever humid air around him and keeps his eyes on the road.

They’re driving back from the park, down the road and back towards the station a few hours later.

He's deep in his thoughts as they drive back, their shifts at each of the road entrances taken over by the second set of officers at each of their positions. Zayn had said that there should be so little traffic going in and out of the park throughout the night time that there was nothing to worry about with needing profilers to determine if every person was innocent. Every person that comes to the park in the evening could be considered a suspect.

So, it's seven at night as they're on their way back to the hotel.

A group of cheerleaders, wearing their shortest of crop tops and shorts, are hosting a school car wash in the park. It’s almost so cliche that Louis can’t help the eyeroll. He wasn’t alive in the seventies, but it’s something he imagines he would have seen if he would have been.  It’s almost sad how well it fits into the atmosphere of the tiny town, as if they’re frozen in the days before bad things happened.

He presses his cheek against the window of the black SUV, the drivers side occupied by Liam.

A song he doesn’t recognize is playing on the radio, but he’s mostly tuned it out.

The only thing he can think of is solving this case, because if they don’t, another body will appear in the morning and that’s the _last_ thing he wants.

They get back to the station and Harry is there, of course, chatting with Zayn.

There's a small group surrounding Harry as he and Liam walk into the station, and he has the same, obnoxious leather gloves on his hands as he holds a cup of tea in his hands. The string from the tea dangles over the side of his cup, and Louis immediately recognizes it as the specific brand he'd purchased and brought with him to the station. It's a brand he's rarely been able to find in stores when he travels, so bringing it with him is one of the few ways he can at least slightly feel at home when he's away on work. And yet, Harry just seems to want to infiltrate everything that brings him even the slightest bit of joy.

He tells himself it doesn't bother him, but he knows he's lying to himself, trying to make all of this feel at least a little less miserable than he's been feeling since the wheels of their plane landed on the tarmac.

It seems that Harry is friendly with everyone in the station that isn't him, including Shawn and Niall, and he really doesn't understand why. He can imagine it might have something to do with the fact that he hasn't been very receptive of the "gift" he claims to have, but if he really had something that he was so proud of, that he was so certain of that speculation couldn't effect, would Louis' disbelief really hurt him to this extent?

None of it makes any sense.

He walks over to the break room and makes himself a cup of the same tea that Harry has, trying to lighten his own bitterness over the fact that he can tell that the box is much emptier than it had been when he left the station that morning. He knows everyone likely just helps themselves to whatever they want in any kind of communal area, but it's something that doesn't happen to him often.

Heating up the water, he leans back against the counter and watches as Liam immediately joins the small group that Harry created. He fits in easily, shakes hands with a few of the guys that they haven't met just yet, and seems to get brought into the conversation easily, without so much as a single hitch. Louis isn't jealous. He's not. It's just that he wishes this was all over and that he didn't have to think about things like fitting in with Harry.

He doesn't not want to be here specifically because of Harry.

Being here just means that the killer is still loose, that bodies are still going to be turning up, that there's nothing between the killer and chaos. That, he decides, is something that makes it reasonable to not want to be here.

The microwave beeps when the three minutes end and he pulls out the hot cup of water before he slips in the tea bag and makes his way over to the group, too.

There's no reason for him to not at least attempt to make small talk, to attempt to fit in with a crowd that the universe has forcefully decided to make him a part of. Liam gives him a smile and everyone seems to welcome him into the circle easily. Harry looks at him a few times, but not a single one of the looks is angry. Not a single one carries any of the feelings that Louis can only assume that the other man has towards him; yet, just from the way he's behaved towards him he can’t help but assume. It doesn't make any sense, is the thing.

Maybe he's overreacting.

He stays with the group a while, chats about things that aren't work and things that aren't bad like everything feels to be right now, before he excuses himself. It's been a long day, longer than he ever really wanted any of his days to be, and going back to his shitty hotel room with the too firm bed and the too fluffy pillows is the only thing that sounds good, in that moment.

He goes over to the room where he'd left his laptop and bag earlier in the day, before the eighteen long hours of work dragged on, and gathers it all up into his arms.

"Night!" He calls out as he heads out the doors and makes his way back.

They start the next morning in the morgue.

Louis is stressed enough as it is, and he’d barely slept through the previous night, but it’s only heightened by the fact that he knows Harry is going to be showing up in the next few minutes.

He’s early, mostly by accident, but more so because he hates showing up after anyone else.

He glances around just once and sighs softly, discomfort wedging itself firm in his bones. Morgues are never pleasant places to be, but they only seem to get worse when the bodies surrounding them had so much life left to be lived.

The Twin Lakes morgue is rarely used, the only employee besides the medical examiner is a sixty three year old retired college professor, and he says he spends most of his days sitting around and reading. Until now, every dead body that passed through here was either a car accident, a suicide, or a natural death.

"Twenty years surrounded by dead bodies," The old man says, "And this manages to shake me."

"I'm not twenty years in, but don't worry, you're certainly not the only one who's shaken by seeing kids killed, sir. It's not right."

"No, it's not. If I'm not overstepping, can I ask how close you lot are to catching this freak?" It's a natural thing to ask. Almost every person he's ever had to deal with on a case asks the same thing, asks how soon or when or what they're doing to catch the killer. But this is the first time he's ever not had an answer. It's the first time he's unsure how to respond in a way that isn't fabricating false hope or just outright lying.

"We're doing the best we can to catch him," he says, and luckily the man doesn't push.

Harry comes in next, followed by Liam. The older man, who's name he realizes he never got, makes a quick exit,  and the three of them are alone in the too-cold room.

"Hey, Louis," Liam says, waving. Harry waves, too, wordlessly. They'd requested that all of the bodies get pulled out for them to look at all at once, just to see if there are any more possible connections they could make before they begin to get buried.

The funeral service for the first victim, Millie, is scheduled for the next day. Hers was the only one he'd heard of, so far, but he knows that the rest are going to follow quickly and then they won't be able to look at the bodies anymore.

He's really not sure why Harry's here at all, but he chooses not to say anything, chooses not to try and start a fight with the younger man. It's not exactly something he wants to do. But Liam speaks instead, asking the question that Louis has been wondering, but in a friendly way, instead.

"So, Harry, what made you chose to tag along? I know Zayn said you should, but I don't, I mean I hate being here, don't know why anyone would want to be." Harry just smiles a bit at this. He's friendly with Liam, and that bothers Louis a whole lot more than it should.

"I've always been really good at picking up on patterns, and Zayn said that there might be something that I can see that you guys or he or anyone else might have missed. If there's any evidence left behind on the bodies, I mean. I certainly don't want to be here, but if I can help then I'm willing to be." Louis holds back an eyeroll.

"You're a college professor, right?" Louis asks, his weird attempt of joining in on the conversation. An air of tense energy spreads fast between him and Harry the second he speaks. It's clear that Harry doesn't like him, and it's off putting.

There's been plenty of people in Louis' life that haven't liked him. That have been off put by his bold and brash and loud personality, but from the moment he first came up to Harry, it was clear that he was disliked, and it only served to make him dislike the other man in return. It's awkward.

“I never wanted to do field work. It’s not something that interests me,” Harry says with a shrug, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world. It only confuses Louis, though, because he can’t understand why someone that claims to hate being out on the field would be here willingly.

“Then why are you here, out on the field?”

“Well, as much as I don’t particularly enjoy being out on the field, I enjoy seeing teenage girls in my town murdered significantly less, so the decision wasn’t exactly challenging.” Louis suddenly wants to throw a tantrum, wants to call Detective Malik and have him throw this man off the case and tell him to never return. A part of Louis’ childishness is only coming out the longer he’s around this insufferable man, and he nearly can’t stand it. There’s an air of _something_ that Louis can’t read, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.

“All of these watches were found on the victims, right?” Harry asks, looking through the box of belongings that each girl had.

“Yeah.”

“They’re all identical. Look.” Harry says, pulling each of the sealed ziplock baggies out and setting them out in a line. “Antique. From the 1940s. And it just so happened that each of our victims had one?” Louis furrows his eyebrows as he looks at the engraving on the back of the watches as well, and surely enough, Harry’s right. Same designer, same year, same everything.

“So our unsub left these on them. Why? What does that mean?”

“The hours are all frozen, too. Millie Kristen’s is frozen on 1:00, Jane Eyre’s is on 2:00, all the way up to the most recent whose is frozen on 4:00.”

“What’s he counting down to, then? Will he stop at 12:00?”

“Metaphorically speaking, 12:00 midnight is supposed to represent a kind of universal doomsday, the end of everything in the known dimension. But, what is he trying to describe as _his_ doomsday?”

“Hopefully we find him before we have to find out.”

Louis returns to his hotel that night with new information about the case alongside a migraine.

On June 21st, 2015, at a secondary location, a 15 year old girl named Millie Kristen was killed. She was a freshman in high school, having just finished up that first year, and was about to celebrate her birthday in only two short weeks. She was popular at school amongst her peers, a cheerleader as well as an extremely talented artist.

She was drugged first, before she died, as the tox screen had shown, but it was even more evident from the sheer lack of struggle. And then she was drowned, a death that would have been so peaceful had the killer not revived her, only to do it three more times, before he was unable to bring her back to kill her again.

On June 25th, exactly four days later, their second victim, Jane Eyre, a 16 year old girl at a different high school on a complete opposite side of the city was killed. She was in foster care, in a home alongside her younger sister while they were both awaiting an adoption date. She died the same day her parents had, June 25th, only two years after the fact. She’d died of blood loss, with a cut at each easily accessible major artery on her body.

With the two entirely different ways of death, it almost seems impossible to connect the two murders, other than the drugging and the way they’d been posed when dumped - and now the new information about the watches. At each scene there had been an identical watch placed on each of the girl’s right wrist, and each had been paused at an exact hour, down to the second.

None of it means anything now, but he tries to think of every single detail of each of the victims’ lives, tries to think of anything that could connect the two of them beyond their age range.

He comes up blank.

Instead of driving himself crazy with it, he strips down and crawls into bed, a sigh on his lips. The thoughts of the case still swirl around in his head, but he’s able to turn the volume of it down low enough that he can rest, that he can sleep, knowing he’ll be picking it back up in the morning.

He wakes to a text message from three text messages from Liam and a single one from Zayn. The three from Liam all just tell him of the newest body that’s been found, exactly on time, four days after she’d gone missing.

_Harry, and I are going to go back to the morgue. We have an idea. I’d like it if you came too._ Is what Zayn’s says. He sighs.

He doesn't particularly want to go back to the morgue two days in a row.

But he knows that he'll have to go to the newest dump site if he doesn't go, so he sends back a quick text to tell Zayn he'll see them there, and flops back over in bed. It's only half five, but the sun is shining relentlessly in through the windows of his room. He's used to having his own blackout curtains at home, used to having things put in place for his own comfort. He's more than used to having to leave home and go without all of the little things that he's used to having, too, but the stress of this case is eating him up more than he ever thought it would. It's almost too much.

But he's fast in getting ready.

He showers quickly, brushes his teeth, makes himself a pot of bad hotel coffee, dresses in his typical work suit, and then he's on the road.

The drive is fast, shorter than anything he's used to in the city, and he parks in the front. Neither Harry nor Zayn are there yet, so he checks the time on his watch and sees that he's, once again, ten minutes early. At this point, he doesn't even think that being early is intentional. It's just something he's always done, something he's quite sure he'll always do.

So he waits.

He grabs his half finished paper cup of coffee he'd brought with him and leans back against the wall of the building. The weather is slightly more mild today, with a soft breeze and much less humidity, with a few clouds in the sky that seem to cover the sun every few minutes. It's a pleasant change from the constant state of burning hot and drowning humidity he's been in since they got here.

A car finally pulls up and he stands up instead of leaning back as Zayn and Harry both get out of the same, shitty car he'd taken a ride in before.

"So, what's the plan?" He asks in place of a hello as the three of them walk through the doors. He ignores the discomfort that he has about having the layout of the building memorized well enough that he doesn't have to read the signs as he walks, just knows where he needs to go to get to the basement room that holds all of the bodies.

Millie's body had been taken earlier that morning to be prepared for her funeral, so they're surrounded only by three bodies, now, instead of four. The fifth still remains at the dumpsite, waiting for his team to finish looking at it, to finish getting all of the pictures they need and all the information they can possibly get out of it.

He knows that both Zayn and Harry are going to be following him down there as soon as they're finished here, but he decides not to think about that, decides to try and live in the present moment as much as he can, if for nothing else than to try and rid himself of the constant stress this case has created.

"Harry's going to do a reading on our second most recent victim. See what information we can get out of that."

"A reading?" Louis asks, still just as skeptical as he's always been about all of the supernatural shit that people claim they can do. He doesn't believe any of it, and he can't wrap his head around the fact that someone who seems as smart as Zayn can possibly still be buying in to all of this. None of it makes any sense.

"Yes," Harry says, clearly ignoring Louis' disbelief.

But there is a small shred of Louis that genuinely, really hopes that whatever it is that Harry claims he can do is real. Perhaps it's the boyish side of him that wants this, that wants everything people say to be true, but he can't really explain it. Maybe it's just his ever growing desire for this case to be finished, for everything to just be done and over, that's bring it out. Maybe he really just wants to let go of this hatred for Harry, or maybe he just wants to see him fail. He can't figure it out inside of his own head so he just sighs and tries his best to not seem as displeased as he is.

The second they're in the room, Harry takes his gloves off.

It's something Louis hasn't seen him do since they met, but as he glances over, he can immediately tell that there's a kind of self consciousness there, that Harry doesn't want him looking, so he averts his gaze. Even if he can tell that Harry doesn't like him, even if he's not the biggest fan of Harry himself, he's not enough of an asshole to do something deliberately that someone doesn't want him to do.

So he looks away for a moment, listens as Harry washes his hands for what feels like much longer than entirely necessary, and walks back over near Zayn. "Good?" Zayn asks, the kind of language shared only between friends, and Harry nods.

He walks over to the body, and every red flag in Louis' body fires off all at once.

He's not entirely sure what he expected from a reading. He's not sure at all what he thought before that moment when he was thinking of the supposed gift that Harry has. He never considered that he used touch to get it, and now that he's made the connection, all he feels is panic.

“You can’t just touch her without gloves on!” He shouts across the room, and both Harry and Zayn freeze, then look at him.

“You invited me here to do this, no?” Harry asks, an eyebrow quirked. He’s retreated his hand, though, and created a considerable space between himself and the body. Louis is stunned as both Harry and Zayn are looking at him with an expectant look on their face.

“I suppose.”

“I promise, it’s just a small touch.” He nods, then, and sighs as he watches Harry. He places a hand over the woman’s hand, his eyes closed. But it’s not even a second before he’s pulling his hand away and going to the sink to wash it.

“What did you see, H?”

“Nothing.” He says, sighing. “Nothing at all. I’ve never - I’ve obviously never done readings on someone who isn’t alive. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but it didn’t work for her.” He’s shaking his head as he scrubs his hands, the water so hot that it’s steaming.

“It’s alright, maybe it only works with someone who hasn’t been dead long, or maybe it only works with people who are still alive.” Louis keeps himself from rolling his eyes. He’s never believed in magic, and this little charade that Zayn has seemed to play into has no effect on changing that. It’s all a hoax, and he’s just surprised that so many people are still buying into it.

He narrows his eyes and watches as the man goes to stand beside Zayn once again. He’s not entirely sure how a man that seems as intelligent as detective Malik would fall for something like this.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Harry says, slipping the worn leather gloves back over his hands as soon as they’re dry.

He doesn’t take the entire team down to the dump site. It’s in the park yet again, on the opposite side of it this time, but the body is positioned in the same way. She’s laid out on her back, her arms crossed in front of her, fingers interwoven.

Her clothes are on, just like the other’s had been, and her hair is put in a long, side braid. Her watch is frozen on the hour, but this time it reads 5:00. Five closer to doomsday. The MO of every crime scene is exactly the same, almost never changing.

When Louis looks up, Harry is there. He’s dressed in black jeans this time and a white button up, the least formal of any clothing Louis has seen him in, but he still has the leather gloves on his hands, once again like they never leave. Having seen him without them earlier was odd - almost to the point where seeing him _without_ them is becoming what he thinks is weird, at least for Harry.

“Do it, Harry. We have to find out.” Zayn says and Harry nods.

“You can’t touch this one. She hasn’t even been examined yet!”

“We have to find out, Agent Tomlinson. What if he can help?” He bites his lip and sighs, nodding his head. It feels wrong, like it’s against every single thing he’s ever learned about crime scene preservation, but he feels like he has to have at least some shred of trust in the people he’s been sent to work with. Louis can only watch in horror as he watches the man who’s supposedly a doctor kneel down beside a body and place a hand over hers once again.

But his reaction - just the physical reaction - is almost instant. His body lurches away, his right hand clutched in his left, as he sits on the muddy ground, his pants and shirt ruined with it. His body is trembling, shaking, and it seems like it isn’t going to stop.

He sits there a moment, still trembling, before he gets up, nearly standing, before falling over and throwing up.

Louis can only stare at him a moment, and every single thing he’s learned, every way of profiling behavior, of finding ticks, of discovering lies, none of it seems to apply here. Everything in Harry’s body language, in the way he’s acting, it’s all only adding up to the thought that he’s telling the truth. There doesn’t seem to be a single thing in his reaction that would lead him to the conclusion that he’s _not_ telling the truth, and it makes his head spin.

“What did you see?” Is what he finds himself asking, but he doesn’t get a response. Harry is on the ground, his eyes glassed out, staring off into space. He has a look on his face that screams of pain, that he can only imagine _is_ real pain.

It’s not possible.

There’s no way it’s possible.

But it really, truly looks like Harry is experiencing physical pain as he claws at himself a moment, his hands trembling as he ignores every question being thrown at him. Even Zayn tries once - just a simple question - but Harry doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at anyone.

"Has this happened before?" Zayn is looking at his friend with a worried expression on his face, eyebrows furrowed and lips downturned in a frown.

"No, nothing this severe. Usually he has some kind of physical reaction with the readings he does, but I've never seen anything like this before. Not even close to this bad." Louis bites his lip as he continues to look at the trembling man on the ground.

The clouds above them are angry, threatening rain, but Harry doesn't even so much as seem to take notice. His eyes are still glassy, no matter how long Louis stands there and continues to look at him. With the way he's grabbing his arms, fingernails digging in to his skin, he can see little droplets of blood that have formed from how hard he's grabbing himself.

It takes almost two hours of sitting on the ground like that, in still silence before Harry so much as says a word. Rain had let loose in the sky barely twenty minutes into Harry’s panic, soaking the two of them as they sat there wordlessly. Zayn had stayed for a while, but when Louis promised he’d stay and look after Harry if he helped the team assess the body once it was brought to the morgue, he agreed.

So he’d stayed, stayed and watched as Harry continued to stare off into the distance, eyes still glassy and the marks on his skin getting deeper as he seemed to roll with waves of fear that took over his body.

It ends abruptly.

Harry blinks a few times, takes in a deep breath, and looks at Louis. He seems to notice they’re alone, but doesn’t seem to know how much time has passed, doesn’t seem to have memory of the last two hours that they’d spent sitting together in the pouring rain. Instead, he speaks, “This man is truly, really, evil,” Is all he says, his head still tucked between his knees like it has been for nearly an hour now. His fingers are twitching and he’s still shaking, but his breathing has calmed down enough that he can speak.

“What did you see?” Louis asks, parroting his question from earlier, and Harry exhales.

“At first I didn’t see anything. It was just really bright flashes of white, and then I heard the screaming. But it felt like echoed screaming - like only I could hear it. It was - it was bloodcurdling. Like the most excruciating scream you could ever -” A few tears fall down Harry’s face. “And then I could feel it. I could feel the heat, everywhere. So hot, like my skin was going to fall off.” Harry pauses, swallows hard. “She was calling out for her parents, saying it hurt, screaming, calling out for someone named _James._ She could feel everything. These girls - they were drugged so they couldn’t move, but they could feel everything happening to them.”

Harry bends over from where he’s sitting, just far enough away that he doesn’t get it all over himself and throws up. They’re both muddy from the rain that’s still trickling down around them, and there are streams of water pouring from Harry’s wet hair over the skin of his face.

“Everyone else headed back to the station with her. Let’s go, I’ll drive you back.” Harry just nods and they stand together in silence.

Louis feels faint.

The feeling only gets worse when the examiner confirms that the girl had, in fact, been boiled alive.

They do another tox screen and find the exact drug that made the girls unable to fight: ketamine. They hadn’t thought to do a date rape tox screen before then, not thinking that it was even a possible factor, but with Harry’s newly presented information, it becomes clear very quickly that this isn’t a case that anyone in the history of their line of work has ever dealt with. It’s something different, something far more evil than any of them originally anticipated.

And then it hits him, very suddenly, that Harry had said everything that they just found out, hours ago, before they had actually discovered any of these things. Before any kind of scientific evidence of the cause of death, of the drug, of any of it was there, Harry had said it.

Every single thing that Harry said he’d felt, that he’d seen, that had happened to the girl, was exactly what happened. With absolutely no other way of Harry knowing what happened, Louis suddenly believes him, believes in whatever gift it is that he has. It’s almost impossible, now, not to. To be able to look him in the face when he had all of these facts before anyone else and was able to tell them and get them confirmed.

It’s something he’s never experienced, having his beliefs challenged so quickly with such substantial, undeniable evidence placed in front of him. Everyone else had believed on blind faith, on the simple trust that what Harry was telling them was true. Louis had hardened away from blind trust like that in college, had turned into the type of person who didn’t believe anything without solid, clear evidence.

Things like this aren’t supposed to have evidence because things like this aren’t supposed to exist, and yet, he believes it now just as strongly as he’d disbelieved it mere hours ago.

“Where’s Dr. Styles?” He asks Zayn, who’s standing in the corner, the look on his face unreadable. This cause of death made every single one of them uncomfortable, he thinks, made all of them feel some kind of sick, twisted sadness in their gut for the pain that this girl had to endure.

“He’s upstairs. Cleaned himself up and stuff, said he’s gonna hang out up there until he can catch a ride home with me.” Louis nods before he makes his way to the little breakroom in the building, makes two cups of coffee, and heads that way.

He sighs softly as he walks upstairs, to the lobby where he knows Harry is sitting.

“Doctor Styles,” Louis says, approaching him with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Here.” He sets the cup down on the table in front of the man, a small smile on his face as he sits beside him. “I um, I actually wanted to apologize to you. For behaving the way I did. For making assumptions about you before I knew all of the facts. I was unnecessarily rude to you, and you didn’t deserve that at all. So. I’m sorry.” He pauses for a moment, “

“You don’t have to apologize,” He says, wrapping his still-gloved hands around the paper cup. “You’re not the first person who doesn’t believe me, and you won’t be the last. You’re not the first person to think I’m odd, either. Even I think I’m a bit odd sometimes.” He laughs just a bit, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “I apologize for acting like an asshole to you, because I did. I’ve gotten used to people being standoffish, having to prove myself. And even after I saw that I didn’t have to, with you, I just. Continued acting the way I did.”

“Don’t worry about it. All’s well.”

“You can call me Harry, by the way. Not even my students call me Doctor Styles.” Louis smiles, just a small upturn of his lips. He doesn’t think it’s entirely possible to give a real smile in a morgue basement, right outside of the morgue, even if this sounds like the best news he’s gotten all week.

“Feel free to call me Louis, then.”

“Alright, Louis. Can we start over?”

“Absolutely.”

Louis flicks on the light to his hotel room for what feels like the millionth time since he’s arrived in Twin Lakes. The mini bar is still fully stocked, for which he thinks he deserves congratulations, and his bed is freshly made up from that day’s room service.

After so long of being in the same place, of being equally as lost as they had been when they first showed up, he’s decided to break into a bottle of whiskey he’d purchased that night. So, leaving the mini bar fully stocked really means little to nothing now, but he doesn’t care. Not drinking on cases was something he told himself back when cases didn’t draw out for weeks. Now, it just feels never ending, like there’s never going to be any kind of resolution for this.

Right now, it feels like this killer is going to get away.

He’s never had that feeling before. Not once in his career has he even had the thought that a killer would be able to outsmart him, that a killer would be able to get away from him when he started looking.

Until now.

It’s not a feeling he ever wants to have again, and it’s a feeling he wants to crush, but the only way to do that would be to catch this man, and that still feels just as impossible as it had on day one.

Even with all of the clues that they’ve discovered, even with everything they’ve found, working together as much as they have - nothing seems to come from it. Usually killers are sloppy. Usually they leave some kind of evidence that they didn’t mean to leave, but that’s not the case this time.

There’s been no DNA underneath fingernails, no stray hairs, nothing.

Nothing at all.

He flops back against the bed and stares at the roof for a moment, focusing only on the pattern of the ceiling for just a moment before he crawls back and leans against the wooden headboard. The pillows are still too fluffy for his liking and this still is far from the best hotel room he’s ever stayed in, but he’s slowly adjusting.

He supposes there isn’t much else he can do, at this point.

He’ll be here until they solve the case, or, god forbid, it goes cold.

The envelope he’d left on the side table with his normal, daily five dollar tip is now replaced by a sticky note with just a smiley face drawn on it, and he chuckles softly at the gesture. The length of the day has embedded itself in his muscles, and as he rolls his shoulders a wave of discomfort wiggles through every joint in his upper body.

He grabs the bottle of whiskey from the brown paper bag that the liquor store had packaged it in and pours it into a coffee mug, just enough to get him buzzed enough that he'll be able to turn his thoughts off, just for a little while. His head has been spinning almost non stop since he got to this shitty little town, and there's nothing more than he wants for it to stop. He wants the murders to stop, he wants his thoughts to stop, he wants to go home and for all of this chaos to stop. It's the first time in his career that he's ever found himself not at all liking an assignment. It's the first time in his career that the thoughts of stopping have even passed through his mind, and he doesn't like it at all.

And then there's Harry.

Harry who was so quick to forgive him even when Louis admitted that he didn't believe him all this time. Harry who has a gift that Louis doesn't, and probably never will, understand. Harry who lights up a room and makes everyone else happy.

He's not sure why he's thinking so much about the other man, even as he downs the entire two shots worth of whiskey in his cup and uses the back of his hand to wipe it away from his mouth, he's still thinking about him. Thinking about the weird, eccentric clothes that he always wears, thinking about the tiniest previews of tattoos on his skin that he got to see, thinking about the little smile he always gives when he's talking to someone he likes.

He wants to blame that he's thinking about Harry on the fact that he's lonely, on the fact that it's been almost a full year now since he's gotten laid, but he really can't blame it on that. If there was anyone he could have been fantasizing about throughout this entire assignment, it should have been Zayn. Yet, his mind has decided on Harry.

His soft pink lips, his legs that seem to go on for ages even though he's not really that tall, his strong arms that give away to the fact that he works out. Something about him just demands his attention, and he can't help the way his thoughts shift to things he normally wouldn't allow. To thoughts that he'll never be able to share with anyone other than the walls of his hotel room and his conscious.

It's been ages since he's pulled from anywhere that wasn't tinder or a gay bar - and it's been ages since he's had to speculate about someone's sexuality, too, but he can't help but let his mind drift as thinks about Harry. Is he gay? Attracted to men at all? Attracted to anyone at all?

He has never had to think about that possibility, before. He's always been well aware that having no sexuality is a sexuality in and of itself, but he's never thought about it actually being someone's life. But he can imagine that being the case for Harry, not being able to touch someone. He can't imagine how sex would work like that, if it could even be something Harry would enjoy.

It's entirely inappropriate for his mind to wonder like this, and it's even more inappropriate that he can feel the beginnings of a hard on in his pants, but he can't help the thought.

He turns the lights off in his hotel room and climbs back in bed, then forces himself to go to sleep for the night. Thinking of Harry isn't something he should do. Even if they'd agreed to restart, even if things between the two of them finally feel alright, it doesn't mean that anything like this is okay. Certainly, it doesn't mean he should speculate. It's not right, and it's not his place, so he has to stop himself as much as he can. And if that means he needs to sleep, then he absolutely will.

"I think we've got a suspect!" Liam practically shouts as he runs into Zayn's office that Louis has now completely invaded. Around him, he has all of the case files, every piece of evidence he could gather, and yet all he could bring up was nothing. The nothingness, the complete uncertainty of this case has been slowly getting further beneath his skin, has been driving him crazier with each passing moment. He's not even sure, now, if it's the body count that's making him so on edge or if it's his own selfish desire to just have this case finished already.

So, when Liam barges inside with the best news he's heard since they landed in this shitty little town, he's happier than he's ever been when it comes to solving a case.

"Lets go," He says, immediately standing from the desk as a team goes out to the cars. His heart pounds in his chest as they drive, lights spinning and sirens blaring. The same all enveloping wall of trees that had made Louis feel a sick kind of uncertainty the first time he'd seen them now brings a sense of comfort - the comfort from knowing there's barely any time left before he'll never have to pass by the trees again, before he'll never have to set foot in this town ever again, before he'll never have to think about the horrible murders that took place here and shook every last citizen down to their very core.

"His name is Jonathan Walsh, born and raised here in Twin Lakes, twenty three years old, his little sister died a few months ago to cancer. She was sixteen. He hasn't been able to hold a steady job nor does he have any kind of clear presence in a regular social circle, according to his social media," Niall says over the phone, catching Louis up on what he'd missed while the team was sitting together. He trusts them well enough to be able to go along with it, but hearing all of that alongside the sirens piercing the air around them, he trusts it more than anything.

It's all coming to a close.

Soon.

He hopes.

They stop in front of a small home just outside of the city center, and Louis motions for Liam and Shawn to run around back, while Bebe goes to the front alongside him. "FBI!" He shouts at the door, just before he kicks it in, gun pointed forwards. His heart pounds in his ears, almost like a rhythm, mismatched between the labored breaths coming from his nose. His hands tingle with the excitement of finally being done, of maybe, hopefully, catching the man who's been doing this. "Jonathan Walsh! FBI! Come out!" He calls again, turning his body to the left quickly, gun still pointed as he makes sure that the dining room is clear.

The house is laid out in several little boxes of rooms, making every corner, every step, feel dangerous. "Clear!" He calls out with the dining room, hearing the same word parroted back at him from every corner of the house.

He's not home.

He sighs softly as he holsters his gun and the team regroups in the living room. They have a warrant to search and seize anything they need to ensure that this is their suspect, so Shawn is quick to start looking around. "Look how many pictures of his sister he has here. I mean, I have quite a few family pictures myself, but this almost seems to be bordering on obsession, don't you think?" Louis isn't sure if he can consider that a major factor in the case, knowing he has plenty of photos of his sisters around his house, too, but he can't deny it.

There isn't a single picture of anyone other than the sister - or at least of the two of them together - and perhaps that's the deciding factor that makes it strange.

The rest of his team combs through the house in pieces, looking for anything incriminating, and Louis immediately goes to the bedroom.

It's messy, clothes scattered about the floor, a pizza box left on the dresser, the television still left on. A cat meows from under the bed before it scampers out and rubs against Louis' leg, purring while it does.

He doesn't think this is exactly how he would have profiled their killer. Not like this. Everything in the house, except the pictures, tells the story of a fairly normal single mid-twenties guy. He thinks his house is almost exactly the same, less the mess that most guys his age would have.

More voices start from the living room, then, and Louis quickly follows, gun drawn as he realizes that the man in question has walked inside. There's fear in his eyes, but Louis has long since learned not to trust that. There has to be something else to prove the man innocent that isn't just what he says. Even if the house doesn't look like something that would fit how he profiled their killer, there have been times that little details like that inside of their profile have been wrong, even if the overall message has almost never failed.

"You're under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of five girls," Liam says, getting his hands behind his back as Louis watches the two of them go out to the car.

Shawn comes up to him, a questioning look on his face. "Do you think it was him?"

"I profiled him as an organized killer, as someone who would hate messes like this. While I know that can't be a deciding factor, I think it's something that definitely needs to be looked into. We can't say for sure right now, but we will, soon." Shawn nods his affirmation, and the rest of the group walks back to their fleet of black SUVs in silence.

"Harry's going to go in there and talk to him," Zayn says, giving Louis a look that he thinks he's been given before. He isn't sure if Zayn is aware that he and Harry are on some kind of good terms or not, or maybe it's really him that's been left out of the loop. Maybe Harry was just being nice when he agreed they could start over.

He's not sure, but he's also not one to over think about things like that.

"Alright," He says, walking to the large one sided glass that shows the inside of the room they use to question their suspects. Jonathan sits at the solid metal table, hands clasped, still in handcuffs, and his leg shakes rapidly beneath him. He looks nervous. His eyes dart around the room every once and a while, sometimes followed by a frustrated sigh that slips past his lips. Louis still hasn't made up his mind on if he thinks the behavior he's showing affirms their accusation or not - but he knows that as soon as he's being talked to - as soon as he can watch the interactions with someone questioning him, there will be no doubt in his mind.

"Louis!" Harry calls, walking up to him with a little smile on his face. His clothes are significantly more tame, Louis notices, taking just a brief moment to look him over. Tan pants and a white top, and even with the print on the tan pants, he looks slightly more professional. Just enough that Louis wouldn't question his being here, wouldn't think twice about seeing Harry walking around the station if he'd been wearing something like that the first time he saw him. He thinks that the design on his pants might be potted plants - of all things - but it's almost cute. Cute in a way that Louis is certain he's never thought about another grown man as.

"Hi, Harry. How are you?"

"I'm great, yeah. It's awesome that you lot found someone. This case has really been wearing me down."

"Yeah, everyone else, too. I think. It's a rough one," He says, sighing softly as he turns to look back at the man. There's no clock in the room, and he can tell as Jonathan's eyes repeatedly glance around every wall in the room that that's what he's looking for. "Are you going in and talking to him?" Louis asks, finally turning to Harry.

"I was about to. Why?"

"Here, take my watch." He undoes the metal of the strap around his wrist and hands it over to Harry who takes it, but still looks at him questioningly.

"Why?"

"Look at him looking around. He's looking for a clock. I guarantee that will be the first thing he asks when you walk in and he sees you wearing it." Harry takes a moment and watches the movement of his eyes, watches as he so much as even turns around to make sure the wall directly behind him doesn't have a clock on it. It's something most people do when they're placed in a room where there's no way to tell the passage of time, but it's still interesting. Interesting how easy it is to give someone something they want and create a sense of trust, even if the something they want is as simple as the time.

"Good call. Alright, I'm gonna go talk to him." Louis nods and watches as Harry opens the door to the room with a code on the keypad and walks inside, a practiced kind of ease as he takes his seat across from the man inside. "Hi, Jonathan," Harry says, clasping his gloved hands together over the top of the table as he sits.

It's immediate how the man's eyes dart down to the watch, the face of it purposely facing away from him.

"What time is it?" He asks, just as Louis predicted.

"Evening, almost time for the lot of us to get off," Harry says easily, "How about you answer a few questions for me so I can go home for the night?"

"So you can go home for the night?" The man asks, clearly offended. "What about me? You lot have me locked up in here for nothing! I didn't kill those girls!"

"I'm not saying you did."

"Yes, you are. I was arrested 'for the kidnapping and murder' of them, right?" He asks, mocking Liam from earlier. Louis crosses his arms over his chest as he watches the man, watches his body language, watches as he looks all around the room. "Listen, whatever, I'll answer whatever questions, okay. My mom just calls me every Thursday night at ten pm, and I have to be there to answer it, alright?"

"Why's that?"

"I just do, okay?"

"Every Thursday night at ten, huh?"

"Yeah."

"How long do you usually talk for?" Louis thinks he's catching on to what Harry's asking, and he can't help the little smirk that comes over his face at Harry's quick thinking. He never would have thought of something that quickly. Two of the girls thus far had been abducted after ten o'clock on a Thursday, and if Jonathan has a solid alibi, then there's no reason for him to be here.

"I don't know - like, an hour. Maybe less, maybe more. What does that matter?"

"When you get off the phone with your mom, what do you do?"

"I go to bed." Harry hums his affirmation before he starts with the rest of his questions. Louis watches intently as Harry lays out pictures of all of the victims in front of the man in question, observes as closely as he can, looks for any and every source of a micro reaction. The only thing he can find is real, genuine disgust. Nothing about this man's behavior has yet to point towards him being the one that committed these crimes, and now all they have left to reanalyze the physical evidence, which he knows Liam is down at the lab doing now.

It's frustrating, having someone that they had almost hoped had been the one who committed these murders, if for nothing else than the selfish purpose of finally being able to put this behind themselves forever.

But catching the person who's actually done this is the most important thing, so as Harry gets up and pretends to trip as he brushes bare skin against the man's skin, Louis has a feeling he knows what he's going to come out and say. It's barely three minutes later before Harry's finished and gathering his things up and leaving the room.

"He didn't do it," Louis says before Harry does, and the other man just nods his agreement.

"Yeah, we're gonna have to let him go." He nods and goes up to another officer, instructing him to read the man his rights, to tell him to stay away from the investigation, and to let him go.

Another night wasted.

Another day closer to the next victim.

He goes back to his little makeshift office to hide his own frustrations at the wasted day. Everything about this case has worn him down to the very last of his nerves, has brought out a new kind of feeling towards his line of work that he doesn't think he's ever once felt over his years of field work. There's nothing he can think of that compares to the emotions running through his head, the blatant frustration, fear, anger, loathing he has for the man who's wreaking havoc on this town. He thinks he knows what they're doing, knows how they're doing it, knows exactly how to avoid being caught, even if every sign is leading them directly to him.

There's never been a case he's been on where there hasn't been a clue, something, anything, that eventually led them to the person. Whether it was an escalation that left the killer sloppy or a kind of hubris that left the killer feeling like they could never be caught - there was always something. Something that, at the end of the day, got them off the streets.

Until now.

Now, he's still drawing a blank and everything is still wearing him thin, leaving him feeling like he's stretched out in every direction, inches away from shattering into a million little pieces.

The door to the office opens and Liam's head peeks in. "Hey, Lou, we're all going out for dinner. Do you want to come?"

He considers it for a moment, before he finally decides to say yes. He hasn't been out with the group since they arrived, and while he's pretty sure they've only been out a handful of times, there's really no need for him to let himself feel lonely anymore. Perhaps being with the group in a more laid back setting will help him think, will help him relax a little easier. Plus, another drink sounds lovely.

"Yeah, sure," He says with a smile, ignoring the brief look of shock that passes over Liam's face. He's long since known that the majority of the time that Liam invites him anywhere it's mostly just out of being polite, extending the invitation to tell Louis he's still welcome even if he almost always says no.

So, for once, he says yes.

They all take their individual cars, just so they can all get home when they're all finished, and parking in the back of the parking lot of the restaurant is an easy choice. It's nine in the evening when they're walking through the doors, happy to get a booth big enough to accommodate all of them.

Harry sits beside him, followed by Zayn, then Shawn. Six people could easily fit on each side of the massive booth, with leather that's soft but torn in a few places, but only one side fills all the way to six.

Louis doesn't realize exactly how hungry he is, exactly how tired he is, until he can finally relax. It's always been like that in his life, with the exhaustion and any other kind of uncomfortable feeling only rooting itself in his mind when he's finally able to notice it.

Sitting around the people he's slowly beginning to consider his friends, though, he isn't so sure if he even wants to notice it. A big part of him wants to retreat to his hotel room and sleep the day away, wants to try and have a small break, a reprieve from the ever growing insanity this case brings, yet the bigger part of him wants to stay and have fun.

"Louis, tell Harry and Zayn about that time, in uni, when we stormed our professor’s office," Liam says, a wide grin on his face as he looks over at him expectantly. Louis can't help the embarrassed blush that grows over his face when Liam says it, but he chuckles just a little when he realizes everyone is looking at him, waiting for him to tell the story.

"Well, it was the end of the semester, finals had been taken, everything was done. Liam and I were both freshmen still, and Yale has always been fairly laid back with student code of conduct. I always chalked it up to being something to do with them figuring we were smart enough to get in, or maybe dumb enough to pay that much in tuition - but, a professor that the two of us had had for at least two classes every semester wasn't in her office, and she knew us well, so we decided to play a little prank on her."

Everyone is looking at him with a slight mix of shock on their faces. Harry is grinning.

"We made sure it wasn't her birthday for real or anything, you know, just to make it funnier. And we decorated her entire office with birthday shit. With all the fixings. Wrapped her desk completely in gift wrap, all the windows, balloons from the ceiling, everything. Even the numbers 2 and 1, everywhere. Just as a practical joke. She knew it was us immediately and emailed us and told us to clean it up, but it was hilarious."

"No way," Zayn says, staring at him for a moment. "No offense, Louis, but there's no way."

"Oh, yeah. I was kind of a menace in college. Especially undergrad years."

"Yeah, one time he actually got us all blacklisted from our favorite bar -"

"Okay, that story is reserved for people that aren't cops, Liam." That makes everyone laugh even harder, and he already feels better.

He and Harry both got teased throughout the night about the rather sudden complete turn around they had in just the short span of two days, but it didn't bother Louis at all, and it didn't seem to bother Harry, so he decided it was just fine. No need to worry about something that isn't bothering anyone. By eleven, it was just down to three.

"Have you talked to Marilyn recently Liam?" Louis asks, nursing his second Long Island iced tea of the night. He's not sure what's made him decide to drink so much just in the course of a single night, but he's still having a good time, even if it's just down to him, Liam, and Harry, now. A part of him almost hopes that Liam leaves and lets the two of them have a little while to talk, to bond at least a little more without the pressure of a group around them.

"Yeah, she's doing well. Sarah was ill earlier in the week, but the pediatrician said it was just a fever and that it was normal, so I'm not worried."

"Sarah?" Harry asks, tilting his head to the side.

"Yeah, I've got a daughter, Sarah. She's three." This makes a wide smile break out across Harry's face.

"I love kids. Can't wait to have my own one day, I think. Especially a daughter. I've been dreaming about starting my own family since I was like, seventeen."

"Seventeen?" Louis asks, an eyebrow quirked as he gives a surprised look to the man sitting beside him. They've moved a few inches farther apart, now, without the constriction of others sitting in the booth with them, but they're still much closer than he thinks they absolutely need to be. A part of him still wants to be closer.

"Yeah. I've always loved babies."

"Do you have a girlfriend, then?" Louis finds himself asking, his mouth not taking the signals from his brain as quickly as he wishes it would. It's the kind of question he would never ask when sober. The exact reason why he rarely lets himself drink when he's on a case - mostly out of risk of embarrassing himself, of saying something he knows he shouldn't say but slips past his filter when he's a little tipsy.

"Oh, no. I'm," Harry doesn't finish that sentence, instead he just shrugs. Louis wants to read more into it, wants Harry to finish his sentence. Wants to hear what he was going to say, but even with the alcohol inside of him, he knows better than to push. "How about you, Louis? Do you have a family?"

"Ah, no."

"Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Date partner?" Harry asks, and he can't help the little bubble of laughter that pushes past his lips. It should have been exactly what he would have expected from Harry, to be as inclusive in all of his questions as possible, to not push him into the corner of being straight that he knows he pushed Harry into.

"No, dated a bit when I was working on my masters, but it's hard with how much I travel for work, now."

"I can see that."

The conversation between the three of them flows seamlessly, and Louis feels almost just as comfortable with Harry's presence as he would have felt with just Shawn and Liam only a week previous. He almost thinks it's odd, how he changed his mind completely, a complete, full flip, in such a short amount of time, but a part of him is happy that he did. He's happy that he's had this chance to sit down with Harry and get to know him as a person. He's learnt, now, that he's funny, silly, and that he lets loose a whole lot more than Louis ever would have gotten the impression that he does.

He also learns that Harry doesn't seem to drink.

Not a drop.

No one says anything, as if it’s something that Harry does normally, so he assumes he doesn’t drink at all.

He sticks with water throughout the entire night and even ends up ordering a basket of fries that he barely picks at, just to keep it from seeming like he's just sitting there without buying anything. Louis isn't sure if that's something he's always done or if it's something similar to what Louis had been doing with not drinking when he's working - but he doesn't push it.

Liam leaves before long, and Louis realizes that it's already past midnight only after his friend finally leaves. It's a little shocking, how fast time passed when he was just relaxing, enjoying himself while being surrounded by people he's slowly starting to consider friends.

He wants to consider Harry a friend.

"Should I drive you home? You look like you're still a little buzzed," Harry says before long, tilting his head to the side with a little smile.

"No, you don't have to. I can call a cab. I'm sure it's out of your way."

"Nah. I actually pass right by your hotel on my way down to my house every night anyway."

"How do you know where I'm staying?" He asks, teasing, an eyebrow quirked with the corner of his mouth upturned in a smirk.

"As much as I'm sure you would love me to say something like I looked it up or that I followed you home, unfortunately that Days Inn is the only hotel in the town."

"Damn, you're right, that's much less exciting than any other answer," He says, giggling just a bit. There's nothing quite like alcohol that can revert him back to a teenager, giggling at stupid jokes out of a cute boy's mouth.

A cute boy.

He thinks Harry's cute, and that's dangerous.

Working with someone he finds attractive has always been dangerous, but now, knowing that Harry isn't just cute physically, but that he's funny, smart, and witty - it all adds up to a dangerous combination for Louis. He hadn't explicitly said anything about  being straight, or about being gay, but neither had Harry. As much as he knows it's never going to happen, that the two of them will probably be stuck in a never ending game of limbo until Louis eventually forfeits on his flight out of the city, he thinks it would be nice to have an end to the speculation if he could just know if Harry would be attracted to him back or not.

If there's even so much as a chance for him with Harry.

Just to entertain the idea.

"So, a ride?"

"Yeah, sure, that would be nice." He pulls out a few bills from his wallet and leaves them on the table, watching as Harry does the same, before they walk out of the restaurant together and out to the parking lot.

He's not sure why he's surprised when he walks up to Harry's car and finds a brand new model of a hybrid in front of him. He had a few joking thoughts that Harry was a hippie, that he was the type that would try and save the earth, but what had been a joke in his head plays out as something even more endearing in real life. Seeing it laid out in front of him makes him want to embrace it, makes him want to ask Harry about it more than anything.

Instead, he gets in without a word.

They listen to Vance Joy throughout the entire fifteen minute drive, easy conversation about nothing important flowing between them, but Louis is happy. Even as he sends a thank you in Harry's direction and climbs out of the car, up to his room and into bed, he feels good.

Once again, Louis wakes with the painful and stark realization that there is a deadline before they find another body.

It’s a horrible realization that has been hitting him the hardest almost every morning when he wakes up with the plain, boring walls of his hotel room. Tomorrow, he thinks, there should be another body. His team has been on the abduction case since they got the news of the last victim being abducted, yet nothing has comes out of it.

Every bit of this case is getting more and more frustrating.

The feeling only gets worse when he thinks about how he was out the previous night, having fun, flirting with a boy when there’s a girl somewhere out there who’s about to lose her life because he can’t do his job properly. He grits his teeth with a sigh and climbs out of bed.

Another day. Another hope of solving the case.  

“Sir?” Another officer Louis doesn’t think he’s ever seen catches Louis’ attention from where he’s standing, looking once again at the board in front of him with all of their victims. There’s something - _something -_ they’re missing. A detail in and of itself that will solve the entire case, and yet, there’s nothing extra that he can see. He can’t see any clues that they may have overlooked, can’t see anything that they missed.

“Yes?”

“The girl who’s gone missing? Her parents are here to talk to you.” He raises his eyebrows, not having been aware there was anyone who was coming today, but he keeps his shock at bay. Parents tend to come in whenever they feel like it - tend to mourn in a way that no one except they can understand.

“Right, thanks,” He says as he walks out of the room and goes to find the parents instead. They’re standing just in the lobby, two mothers, and one of them has an arm firmly around the other woman’s waist. A unit. “Hello, you’re Jay’s mom?” He asks, not looking directly at either of them. Assuming anything is something he’d learned long ago not to do in this business, not when dealing with others.

“Yes,” They both say at the same time. He nods.

“Here, let’s go talk. There’s a meeting room back here we can have some privacy in.” Neither of them say anything as they follow him down the winding halls of the station, until they reach the end of the longest hallway and he clicks open the door.

It’s dark, bathed in the last few minutes of sunlight of the day, so he flips on the light switch before he motions for them to sit.

  


“I was thinking, we could come back to my place and maybe talk about the case a little more. Maybe a little change of scenery might help get our minds going a little better?” Harry says, motioning to Louis, Liam, and Zayn. All of them. To Harry’s house. It sounds like a bad idea more than anything else, but Louis has always been good at following through with bad ideas, especially when the option follows something that’s hurt his feelings.

“Do you have any of those nice cookies left? From earlier this week?”

“Yeah, think there’s about half the batch left in my jar.”

“Then I’m down,” Zayn says, before his gaze shifts to him and Liam.

“Yeah, sure. Sounds like a good idea,” Liam says, and so it’s decided.

Walking in to Harry's house is like walking in to a complete different world.

The garden outside is perfectly kept, with the scent of freshly clipped grass floating in the wind all around him. There are bunches of little pink and yellow flowers in pots and placed in the ground all around the front of the house, and a healthy, well matured peach tree is in full bloom across the lawn. A bush with vibrant yellow roses grows high up the walls of the house, a hole cut through the center to give a small bay window plenty of light, only blocked out by white curtains tied to the sides. A few sunflowers sit further back from the front of the house, lining a stone path that seems to lead around to the back. All of it, even with all of the different kinds of flowers all around them blend in together so cohesively, chaos molding into a kind of beauty that it all seems like exactly something Harry would want to accomplish.

The outside of the house itself is covered with white siding, with a porch sitting just in the center, a well loved, bright yellow rocking chair sitting to the side. It all screams exactly something he would have expected to see when he walked into Harry's little world, and it brings a smile to his face. With the sun being all the way down, he can't quite see everything, can't make out every detail, but the beauty of it all doesn't get away from him.

As soon as they're through the doors, Zayn and Harry both go to take their shoes off, so Louis follows suit and watches as Liam does, too.

It makes perfect sense that they would, because as soon as Harry flips the light switch on, it reveals a pristine, almost entirely white interior of a living room all the way to the kitchen. Light hardwood floors open up to massive windows at the back, with bright marble countertops throughout the kitchen, and white cupboards. Louis doesn't think he's ever seen someone around his age with their life so put together, with everything that seems so fancy. He almost wants to go home and check himself over, almost out of shame from seeing how much better he should be.

The next thing he notices - and the one thing that almost knocks the breath out of his lungs - is that Harry takes the gloves off of his hands. Louis, in a strange way, had almost thought they were permanent. He'd almost managed to grow so used to seeing them firmly left on the other man's hands that now, seeing them off, is what feels wrong. The skin there is paler than his arms from rarely being out in the light, and he tries his hardest not to look, but he almost can't help it.

Harry notices, and he clasps his hands behind his back, hiding them.

A source of self consciousness, Louis notes.

"You can all sit down if you want, I'm gonna grab drinks. Anyone want anything?"

"Tea, if you have it," Liam says with a little smile.

"Water please," Louis says, and then Harry is off towards the kitchen. Zayn is, of course, the most comfortable among all of them, and Louis knows it's just because he's been Harry's friend the longest, knows that it's just because he's been here before, has known Harry more than any of the rest of them have. Yet, he can't help the simmer of jealousy that bubbles just beneath his skin at the idea of it, that he doesn't know Harry well, that he probably never will get to know Harry well.

It's irrational.

Completely and entirely irrational, especially when he's just meant to consider Harry a coworker, but he can't help it. The little crush that he'd realized the night previous is still there, and now it's manifested into something else, into some sort of infatuation that he doesn't know what to do with or how to handle. He's been on his own so long that even just the thought of wanting to be with someone, of wanting someone else around, feels off. It doesn't feel like a thought he should be having, almost like it's wrong in a way.

Harry comes out barely a moment later with a small, wooden tray with all of the drinks on it, along with a bottle of red wine and four glasses for it. He sets the tray down in the center of the table and takes his seat on the love seat. "Alright, so, is the change in scenery inspiring any ideas?"

"Well I was thinking earlier about how he's been spacing it out with four days at a time, right? Was there anything in this town that happened that caused any kind of four day lag? A shut down maybe? There has to be some kind of significance in the four day timeline, because he's clearly doing that on purpose," Liam says before he takes his tea from the tray and holds it in his hands.

"I can't think of anything, really," Harry sighs. "I mean I was born and raised here, but the only things I can think of with four day timelines probably lasted more than four days, like the fire that made everyone in the town evacuate for like five or six days when I was in eighth grade."

A cohesive sigh fills the room.

"This case really sucks," Zayn finally says, shaking his head as he leans back against the couch. "In school we learned about serial killers that were good at what they do, to the point where they didn't get caught until they wanted to. But actually experiencing that feels wrong. I can't handle this much longer."

Louis can get behind that.

"Maybe we should all just relax a bit and not think about it unless an idea pops into our minds?" Harry offers up. "I could grab a game and put on some music, and we could just relax and maybe not think about it too much. I think that's the best way to try and put pieces of a puzzle together." Passive thinking has never exactly been what Louis would have considered productive - but after the long day all of them had in the office and still being equally as stumped as before - he thinks that's exactly what they need to do. So, agreeing comes easy.

Harry only listens to his music on records.

Something about the quality of the music, he'd said. After his third glass of wine, Louis found himself agreeing. With the music playing behind them, scratchy and authentic with each beat that flows through the air, scrabble tiles spread all across the coffee table, and the soft breeze from the ceiling fan on the roof above him, Louis is comfortable. Comfortable in a way he hasn't been in longer than he cares to admit, and he loves it. There's a kind of energy that Harry gives off, a welcoming, accepting kind of energy that Louis hasn't felt from anyone since his mom passed, and having it again is something he's not nearly ready to give up.

Even as Liam leaves, then eventually Zayn, and he knows he needs to go, too. He doesn't want to. That selfish corner of his brain that wants to hold on to all of the nice things that he can ever get in life screams for him to stay, to have another glass of wine, to touch Harry's hands and deflect every insecurity the other man might have about anything. He wants to ask Harry about his life - wants to ask exactly how he got where he is, wants to learn about the inner workings of the strangest man he's ever met's head. "I guess I should go," He says instead.

"You don't have to if you don't want," Harry responds easily. "You've had just as much wine as I have, and if you're feeling anything like I am then you probably shouldn't drive." Even when he's tipsy Harry is more rational than Louis when he's sober, and that only makes him want to stick around more.

"I don't want to be a bother." He shrugs, trying to judge Harry's reaction.

"You're not at all. I've got an extra room. There's some more plants in there right now, growing a little more before I put them out in the garden. Maybe they could use some company."

"You think the plants need company?" He asks, a small smile on his face as he laughs just a bit. It's another thing that he absolutely would have expected Harry to say, and yet it still surprises him. Everything about Harry seems to take him by surprise - especially now that he gets to see the little things, the small, seemingly insignificant little details about his life that he wouldn't otherwise have noticed.

"Of course. Sometimes I go in there and do my work so they don't get too lonely." They laugh together at that, and the atmosphere glows. "But really, stay. It's nearly one in the morning. We can go to work together tomorrow."

"Alright. Just one more time - you're sure?"

"I'm sure."

So that's that.

"Alright. Then let me do your washing up, at least."

"No, you're the guest. That's not right."

"How about I wash and you dry?" Banter with Harry is easy, and Louis can already tell that it's exactly what he's been missing in his life all this time - can tell that this is what he's needed all along. Someone to keep up with him, someone that he can talk to this easily without reservation, without the worry that they won't understand his humor, without that nagging fear that he'll have to backtrack and explain a joke that he didn't quite phrase as well as he thought he would have. It's something that he's craved all along and never been able to put a label to, and yet, seeing Harry in front of him now, and feeling everything that he's been missing, it all seems to be falling into place.

He tries his hardest not to look at Harry's hands as they wash up together, but he can't help it. He's always been curious, always wanted to know everything about everything, and there are times when it's more burdensome than helpful. Now is one of those times.

The first thing he'd noticed when he first walked into the house, and even more so now as he gets a closer look, are the small white lines that decorate the entire surface of his hands. Little white lines that look like Harry did them to himself years and years ago, faded just enough that they're barely noticeable, but he can't help but see them. It makes his heart ache, just a dull pain in his chest as he thinks of the kind of pain he must have been feeling when he was young, overwhelming and all consuming enough that he would do that to himself.

Harry catches him looking again, and that's the second thing Louis notices. Harry, as calm as he seems, is incredibly attentive. He seems to catch everything - every subtle change, every glance, every shift in the atmosphere. Their eyes meet for just a moment as Harry seems to consider something that Louis can't read, and then he hands him a glass to dry. "I used to um, I used to cut myself on my hands in middle school, because I hated them. I hated that I would touch things and see everything."

"You don't have to talk about it, Harry. You don't owe me any explanation just cause I'm curious."

"I know. But I want to tell you."

"Alright."

"And I'm open enough about this with everyone else, but it created a lot of problems with me, specifically a lot of compulsions. Everyone down at the station knows because I know being open about it keeps people from being suspicious of any weird behaviors I have. But I have most of it under control now. Just, yeah, don't think I'm weird or anything."

"Well you are the strangest person I've ever met, but that's a compliment, really. I quite enjoy your weirdness." Harry smiles at that and hands him another glass to dry. That ends the conversation, and Louis can't help but feel an odd mixture of happy and confused at why Harry would share something so deeply personal with him. But he doesn't question it. He knows everyone opens up differently, and if this is meant to be the beginning of their friendship, then he'll take it.

They don't talk about anything else important for the rest of the evening, but rather they end up back on the couch, watching very bad middle-of-the-night shows, laughing, and talking about silly things. Louis talks about his houseplants at home that he can't believe survive how often he goes away from home, talks about the cat that sometimes comes and visits him from the neighbors, and talks about the loud heater in his apartment.

It's silly little things to share, but when Harry talks about the raccoons that he's had in his shed for over five years and mentions that his favorite mug has been dropped and broken and glued back together a dozen times, it feels like it all fits right in.

Before long, it's nearly half three and they're both yawning, but Louis isn't quite ready for the night to end.

There's something magical about spending time with Harry that almost makes time feel like it's in triple speed. It goes by faster than he thinks it ever has for him, and every second feels like he could hang on to it forever. He knows it's been barely any time at all since he couldn't stand Harry, and yet now it feels like all of that time was wasted so poorly, spent using energy on disliking someone he can easily see becoming his favorite person.

"Okay, so here's your room. Bathroom is attached there, that one's the closet," Harry says, pointing at each door respectively. "The sheets just got changed a couple days ago so I hope you don't mind me not putting fresh ones out."

"Has anyone ever said they mind you not putting fresh one's out?"

"My mom would. She's really into that southern tradition of not dressing the bed until the guest is ready to go to bed." That makes Louis laugh, just an airy little thing that comes out of his throat without his permission more than anything. He can imagine the kind of person that Harry's mother would have to be to create Harry, and she sounds like exactly the kind of person his own mother would have wanted to be surrounded by.

"Alright, well if I'm going to be keeping these plants company, I suppose I should get to know what they are, at least." Harry smiles as he walks over to the window sill and runs his fingers over the soft tips of the green plants. Louis isn't entirely sure if he's keeping Harry up or not, if he's being rude by not letting him sleep, but he can't help not wanting the night to end, can't help wanting every moment to last the rest of his life.

"Alright, so on the far left are my sunflowers. They stay in the pots for about a month before they're ready to go out. I plant them in cycles all throughout spring and summer since they only stay in bloom for a few weeks and I like to have yellow in my lawn all season. Then over a little are some herbs, they'll go in the pot right outside my kitchen window when they're mature enough to handle the heat. Then there's some more flowers, carnations, roses, a few daisies. They'll be ready to go out in a few weeks. Then there's the food. A few pumpkins, potatoes, corn, other things that need to grow up a little before they go into the ground."

"You have time to do all of this along with working two full time jobs?" Louis quirks his eyebrow as he looks over to the other man. He barely has time to feed and water himself when he's home, let alone keeping track and taking care of all of this.

"Well I only teach two classes three days a week, and this is the most I've been down at the station really... ever. This is the worst thing that's ever happened in this town." The last sentence leaves a slight air of awkwardness floating in the room as the heavy weight of reality seems to sink back down on both of them. Fleeting moments throughout the night had left Louis forgetting why he's here at all - but then there's the moments where it all comes crashing back all at once.

He doesn't like those moments.

"Sounds like you have a bit of time to take care of these then."

"Yeah. It's one of my favorite things to do," Harry says, smiling again. "But I'll let you get some sleep. Good night, Louis."

"Good night, Harry. See you in the morning."

At three in the afternoon, they get another call that the body they all expected to see has shown up.

Louis throws his notebook across the room as soon as he hangs up the phone and puts his head in his hands. A scream is building in the back of his throat and hot tears well in his eyes. It's not right. Nothing about any of this is right and the knowing he's completely powerless over any of it is the hardest part of any of it. That's always been the part about his career that he's not liked, and yet this feels worse in a way he's never experienced. Never once has he felt this stumped about a case, never once has he felt that there's nothing he can do to solve it except wait, and waiting means more innocent lives lost, and it makes his heart ache.

He thinks about his sisters, thinks about his family and how he would have felt if this had happened to his family. Thinks about how he would feel if one of his own sisters had been taken away from him so brutally, and just the thought alone makes him feel nauseous, makes him feel like the entire world could end at any moment.

And that's the thing that makes everything click inside of his head, makes everything suddenly make sense in a way he hadn't felt about the case before. There's a kind of protectiveness over family that people tend to have - especially older siblings or parents - and that must be it. He can't think of anything else that could possibly be causing this.

He gets up from his desk faster than he ever has before he's sprinting over to Niall. "Niall, I need any kind of tragedy, illness that caused death, suicide, murder, injury, anything that's happened to girls, and then narrow that down to any girl between the ages of twelve and seventeen who have an older sibling. Most likely an older brother." Niall nods and Louis stands there a moment as he watches his friend type into his database, and two possible suspects come up.

Edward O'Connel and Collin West are the two faces that flash on the screen in front of him. Both of them have current, steady jobs. That's not something that Louis would have profiled for their killer, but this is the only thing that he can think of.

He calls the rest of the team in.

"Colin was my first best friend's older brother, actually. She um, committed suicide when we were younger. He finished school and moved away to go to college though, so he doesn't really make sense as the killer," Harry says. Louis wants to scream. If there was nothing else that could have possibly led them to their killer, he thought this was it. He really, genuinely thought this would be the thing that would lead them to catching the person who did this. There have been so many times in his career that he's been wrong, and yet this time feels like the most profound, like it's another wrong-doing of his that has led the killer to be able to continue doing the evils he's doing.

"You alright, Louis?" He hears Harry asking, but he needs to go, needs some air, needs anything that isn't the tiny confines of the walls of the station, so he walks away. Everything about this case has taken a higher toll on him than anything else he's ever worked on, but he thinks that's just because this is also the worst case he's ever had to try and crack. Four deaths while he's been working a case is officially the most he's ever seen, and that's something he doesn't ever want to surpass. Even if this case were to just go completely cold - even if the killer were to go underground and never resurface, as long as he never saw that number touched ever again, he wouldn't feel the edge of worry anymore.

"Hey," Harry says, breaking him out of his thoughts. He's not entirely sure how long he's been standing outside, but he still jumps when he hears Harry's voice before he turns to the other man and gives a small smile.

"Hi, sorry about storming off."

"We're all frustrated. None of this is cool, and none of it makes any sense."

"Yeah," he says, sighing.

"We're gonna catch him. You know that. I know it. One day, some how, he'll end up where he belongs." Just the certainty in the way Harry says it is enough to put at least the beginnings of his worry at bay. He nods his agreement.

A tense kind of atmosphere manifests itself throughout the entire office for the rest of the day.

Even hours after Louis went back inside and continued doing the things he knew he needed to do, there is an energy throughout all of them that doesn't sit well. He forces himself to bear through it, to go on through the motions that need to be tended to, but it's harder than it should be, more emotionally taxing than it ever has been, and even more physically exhausting than his job has ever felt.

Since being on this case, he's had serious thoughts of quitting, of throwing in the towel and never having to deal with this ever again. It's a thought that doesn't sit well with him, the idea of losing, in a different way, to the "bad guys". He knows that it's the kind of losing that really only exists in the parameters of his own mind, but it would still feel like a kind of surrender, a kind of giving in and letting them win that he isn't entirely ready for. Yet, this case and this case alone has made those thoughts bubble to the forefront of his mind in a way they never have.

He's always loved his job.

Since the first day he got it, fresh face and optimistic from the academy, he's always thought he would change the world. He has. He's changed the world in a way of his own and taken away some of the worst from the streets, and yet it still feels like it's never enough, that there's always someone else to replace anyone that they take away.

No one speaks to each other for the remainder of the day, including Harry.

Harry seems to be hit just as hard as he is by all of this, as he sits at his own little desk, head cradled in his hands as he tries to think up anything he can as well. It's taking more than it should out of all of them, and yet each and every person that he sees around him is still equally as dedicated to figuring it out, to solving all of this and getting the happy ending they all deserve.

Everyone leaves the office on time.

As soon as the clock strikes eight in the evening, marking yet another twelve hour day, everyone heads home. It's mostly silent aside from the scrape of shoes against carpet, but the mood surrounding everyone, the somber energy that always comes after a kill, it's contagious. No one is unaffected.

Louis sighs as he heads home.

  


Waking up the following morning leaves Louis with what feels like a hangover, but he knows he didn’t have a drop of alcohol the previous night. There’s a constant pounding at the back of his head that won’t stop and his mouth is dry from the second he opens his eyes. And as always, after a few moments go by, reality all comes back to the forefront of his mind as he remembers where he is, why he’s here, and who’s been lost in the time since he has been.

The previous day still feels wrong, makes him feel ill even just at the thought of it.

Knowing he’ll have to face the same parents he faced only a few days previous makes the nausea in his stomach churn with a vengeance. Delivering that news, the news that someone’s child is dead, it’s the hardest thing about his job. Seeing those that lost their lives is the second worst, but death isn’t felt hardest by the dead, only those that survive them.

It’s something he’s had to deal with ever since he was promoted to being in charge, and it’s something that’s always bothered him, but perhaps never as much as it is in this case. The first case he’s ever worked where he doesn’t have a lead, where he doesn’t so much as have a clue. That – he thinks – is the thing that’s fucking with his head the most. He can’t handle not knowing, can’t handle feeling like he’s a step behind.

For most of his career he’s felt like he’s a step ahead. It’s just a given fact that the “good guys” are the ones who are ahead, who are the ones that win in the end, no matter what. But that’s something that doesn’t feel like fact in this case.

This case has changed what, until now, was just _obvious._ There had always been things that were clear, that were expected, that he thought could always be continued to be expected. As much as he knows it’s important for opinions to change, for world views to shift, this is one he didn’t ever think would have to.

He leans back in bed with a sigh before he rubs his eyes hard enough that he sees black spots over his vision.

Grabbing his phone from his charger he types up a message to Liam, telling him to let everyone know he’s going to work from home for at least the day, and that’s all he can manage before he grabs his laptop and starts reading. Perhaps, he hopes, there will be another case, something else that has happened _somewhere_ that will have the answer to this.

There has to be.

Four more days go by in a frenzy, and Louis is almost entirely sure that he’s slept less than eight total hours in three full nights of sleep.

The digital clock beside his bed flips over to seven thirty in the morning before the shrill buzzing of the alarm starts going off, meant to wake him up, but he just stares at the ceiling. It only takes him a moment before he slaps the little machine to turn it off, but even as the silence embraces him all over again, he doesn’t feel any better.

The call is set to come at any time – that another body has been found, that another life has been taken from them, from another parent, from another friend. He doesn’t know if he can handle it this time, knowing he’s let yet another family down, that he’s let himself down all over again. It’s painful, is the thing. As much as he knows that he doesn’t have the right to mourn these deaths this strongly, that he doesn’t have the right to say that losing these girls is hurting him, it _does,_ and it hurts terribly. It hurts in a way he can’t even begin to compare other cases to, because they can’t even begin to match the feeling.

Before this, the worst case he’d ever been on was when the eldest sibling killed an entire family because she’d felt that her parents were neglecting her. It was a hard case even though it was solved quickly – she had just been so angry and so sad and so lonely that she’d acted so irrationally. Louis has never been the type to make excuses for those who do the absolute worst thing a person can do to another, but that had been one of the cases that stuck with him all along.

He forces himself out of bed for the first time in the entire four days, and gets himself ready.

It’s a feat, forcing the knots out of his hair and scrubbing his body clean of the four days of grime he’d let build up, but it’s not long before he’s walking in to the station once again.

Everyone is talking.

The atmosphere of the place almost seems _happy –_ and that’s the first thing that confuses him more than anything. Walking in and finding anything except the same, haunting energy that has filled them all to the brim with each morning of the fourth day wasn’t what he was expecting.

“No body was found,” Harry says, filling him in. He doesn’t exactly look _happy_ per se, but he certainly doesn’t look sad like Louis had expected. None of them do. “We haven’t all gotten our hopes up just yet, but I think you know as well as I do that a killer breaking such an established streak isn’t very common by choice.”

“No body was found?” He has to ask, has to make sure he heard correctly, has to make sure the pit that’s formed itself deep in his stomach can slowly start to fill itself, because he thinks if it were to all come crashing down again after this he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Not like this. Not this strongly ever again.

“No.”

“Has he ever dumped later than the middle of the night on the fourth day?” Suddenly it almost feels like all the knowledge he has about the entire case has just left his mind, like he can’t remember a single detail, or perhaps he just wants to make sure, wants to affirm that all of his hopes just might come true. Even if he knows it’s unlikely, even if he knows he’ll be on edge for the rest of the day, he hopes. He hopes with every fibre in his being that this can all be true, that it’s done, that there’s no reason for him to keep going.

“No, it’s always the middle of the night and the body is usually found before the following morning.”

“Have any other girls gone missing yet?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all, then? He’s just broken his pattern?”

“For right now, it seems that way.” For the first time since he’s gotten to the station, it feels, he can breathe easily. For what feels like the first time since their wheels touched down in Twin Lakes, he feels like something is beginning to fall in to place. Even if they haven’t caught their killer yet, just knowing that he’s broken his pattern gives him some kind of hope that he’ll stop. Not catching him just yet isn’t the worst thing that could possibly happen – the worst thing that could happen would only be another body being found exactly where he’d thought there would have been this morning.

He breathes a sigh of relief, and then he makes his way to the break room to make himself a cup of his favorite tea.

Harry doesn’t trail behind him, but rather Louis thinks he hears him catching up Shawn as he walks in just the same way that he’d just caught him up. Only for the first time since he arrived in the town does he feel the heavy set tiredness throughout his entire body, almost like with the new chance to be able to really feel it all, to be able to shift his entire attention away from the murders even if just for a moment, he can finally focus on how _he’s_ feeling.

He knows very well that he’s neglected his own health since he picked up this case, and it’s something that will need to stop if they’re going to stay here much longer, but it’s the first time he’s really taken a moment to feel in the moment. Since they landed he felt like he was living in the future, living one day, four days, twenty hours, any period of time in the future. But now, without that pressure of knowing when the next body is going to come, he can focus on himself in the moment.

It’s not a pleasant feeling.

His lower back aches and his eyes are stinging with the exhaustion.

Sighing softly, he tilts his head to the side, popping it on either side and listening to the symphony of cracks that follow. Then he opens the cabinet where he keeps his tea and can’t help the smile that spreads across his face when he sees a brand new box, unopened, with a bright purple sticky note on the side with a smiley face drawn on it, followed only by an “ –H”.

Throughout the day, the levels of tension amongst all of them vary.

For the beginning it stayed fairly high, with everyone wondering if their killer was just running late, if something had stopped him from dumping the body at the exact time he was meant to. By noon, the tension had started to seep away at the edges, fraying just enough that everyone could begin to think rationally enough to see that a killer this organized, this far ahead of them, wouldn’t break pattern without a reason. By the end of the day, the worry was nearly gone.

“You think he’s really gone?” Louis asks to the group as they all stand in the breakroom, sharing slices of an ordered pizza before they all go home for the night. The long nights haven’t ended, not with the killer still out there, but as ten in the evening comes closer and closer, it feels less likely they’re going to find a body.

“Still no girls reported missing, and we put out a broadcast that said if anyone was missing for more than just a few hours to call us and we’d take it seriously. We had one girl we thought might have been abducted earlier today, but it turned out she was just running late to get home from her friends house.” Louis nods, a kind of relief washing over him.

“That sounds like the best news I’ve gotten since I got here, I don’t know about the rest of you.” He gets a few light hearted chuckles out of that, and a few more nods of agreement. He thinks they’re all tired. Tired physically, emotionally, and most of all, tired of this case. There comes a point when the level of exhaustion can only get so high, that the level of feeling out of control can only get so much, before people start to break. It was almost to that point for him and for his team. It’s a hard thing to admit, and it’s even harder to see before it happens, but this news – even if it’s just a tease – is more than enough to relieve at least the slightest amount of the stress.

“Is it safe for us to head home for the night?” Liam is the first to ask. Louis knows he’s always eager to get back to his hotel room so he can skype with his wife and kid, so he never picks on him for wanting to rush home. It makes plenty of sense.

“Yeah, I think so. You, Zayn?”

“Yeah, I’m exhausted.” That gets a few equally as tired grunts in response, and then everyone is dispersing with a few muttered out goodbyes.

Louis, naturally, waits up for Harry.

It just feels like something that he should do, feels like something he _wants_ to do, so he does. He waits as Harry goes back to the back room and gets his signature shoulder bag adorned with all of its pins and patches before he comes out. “Hey!” Louis says, cringing at his own enthusiasm just for a moment. It’s too late at night to be enthusiastic, and he’s too tired for it, too.

“Hey Lou, I actually wanted to talk to you for a sec,” Harry says, but he sounds sad, almost guilty. Louis can’t help but feel something like anxiety pit in his gut, but he keeps his face stoic as he waits for Harry to continue. “As much as I’d like to just let this go and never have to look at this case again,” Harry starts and Louis looks at him for a moment. He knows they have to keep working the case. He knows it’s not going to end here and it’ll never end for the families of the victims until they catch the person who did this. It’ll never truly end for any of them until they get a little closure for all of what’s happened.

Even if none of them were directly affected by the killing, he can see exactly how it’s managed to effect all of them. Liam spends a little longer on the phone with his wife, Niall lurks a little longer on profiles before he dismisses them, Shawn has worked himself harder throughout the few weeks they’ve been in Twin Lakes than he’s ever seen him work, and Louis has always considered him a hard worker. It’s something he’s well aware will stay with all of them throughout the rest of their careers, but whether it’s a good thing that it stays with them or not will only be decided by the outcome. If they catch him, put him away, lock him up tight and throw away the key, perhaps it won’t haunt them as strongly. There can only be hope for that, now, especially with this being such a perfect murder, but Louis has always been hopeful.

He’ll keep hoping he’s caught until he is. No matter when that day may come.

“Is there anything else we can do at this point?”

“I kind of –“ Harry pauses, bites his lip and turns, almost like he’s making sure there’s no one else in the room. “I’ve kind of kept this idea to myself for about three days now, and I know that was shitty, and I know it’s awful that I have, and I take full responsibility for not finding him sooner if this idea brings us to him,” Louis furrows his eyebrows, a strong feeling of anger pitting itself in his stomach, “But as I was thinking about it, I was starting to realize exactly how much all of the ritualistic sides of this murder are manifesting themselves like compulsions, I don’t think he’s doing it so much on purpose, and I certainly don’t think he _wants_ to do these things exactly how he’s doing them. I think he’s ill, specifically with OCD, and I think these are ritualistic compulsions. All centred around the number four.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. He’s not entirely sure what to say.

“I know I shouldn’t have kept it to myself. I just. A part of me hopes that’s not what’s it, because it only paints a bad image of me, and of everyone else who has it, and I didn’t want that. But now I’m telling you because I had to force myself over my pride.” Harry is rambling, and Louis feels his own anger dissipate. He can imagine himself in Harry’s shoes, embarrassed and unsure, putting blame where it may or may not belong.

“Let’s have Niall pull a list of everyone in the town who has it. Then we interview them.”

Harry nods.

They spend the next few days interviewing the five documented residents of the town who have obsessive compulsive disorder.

Not a single one fits the outline of the profile they have. It’s frustrating – more so than it should be, and it’s almost painful. It almost brings back that same feeling of frustration, of fear, of _anger_ that they haven’t caught their killer yet, even if the stakes don’t seem to be quite as high anymore. Even as the days go on and the hours get shorter and the things they can look at get smaller, the stress seems to stay consistent.

As they finish up with the fifth person – an older man in his mid forties – and go back to Harry’s car, even Harry looks angry. “Like I said, a part of me didn’t want that to be it –“

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Harry. I understand. I really do.”

“You know, I bet my plants miss you,” Harry says, a tiny smile forming alongside the clear sadness that has made a temporary home on his face. “I think they really liked having you sleep in that guest room.”

“Your plants miss me, huh?”

“Yeah, I mean, obviously.”

“Well I’m not one to make the plants lonely. To yours, then?”

“Are you going to stay over?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Well, the plants do.” Louis laughs, then, a smile finally breaking out over his face. He thinks this is flirting. He thinks all the time he’s managed to spend with Harry so far might be the closest he’s gotten to flirting with someone in years, and it feels _good._ It feels really nice to finally feel like there’s a chance that he’ll have company.

“Alright. Then my hotel first so I can get some clothes, then yours.” Harry nods and starts the car. He’d stopped taking his own car after the first day when Harry had insisted that the two of them should just ride together to preserve gas. Really, the attempt just to get them to be closer, just to get the two of them into the car together didn’t need to be under a disguise, but Louis was happy to oblige.

So, as they drive to his hotel, a playlist with music from before either of them were even born playing loudly through the speakers, Louis is happy. It’s an odd thought, really. He doesn’t think he should be allowed to be happy when he’s meant to be investigating a murder, but he _is._ The killings have stopped, the stress is significantly lower than it had been when the kills were actively happening, and now he’s made what he thinks is a friendship that could easily bloom into something more with Harry.

So easily.

Another bottle of wine comes out before long as they’re splayed out on their individual couches in Harry’s living room.

He knows he can’t curl up with Harry, can’t cuddle with him or hold him or put his arm around him, and all of that makes more than enough sense to him. It does. Even if Harry didn’t have the physical reaction, it wouldn’t be his place to force Harry to allow him to do things just because he wants to do them. It wouldn’t be right. So as much as he wants nothing more than to be able to cuddle with the other man who he thinks he’s been flirting obviously enough with, he won’t.

Not until he gets some kind of permission, some kind of green light.

He takes another sip of his wine, red this time, and listens as Harry keeps talking about the record that’s playing in the background. He talks about how he saw the artist live a few times, about how he had to save up enough to be able to get an entire suite box to himself to make sure he wouldn't get touched, but it was still the best experience of his entire life.

He’s decided he loves listening to Harry talk.

His voice is slow, it comes out in long waves, drawing in as he gets excited as he talks a little faster, and when he’s remembering things a little smile forms over his entire face as he talks a little slower, almost like he’s savouring the memory.

“You look happy,” Harry says once he’s finished talking about his artist. He still has this goofy little smile on his face and Louis never wants to look away. God, he wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him so much.

“I am.”

“Can I come sit next to you?” The question takes Louis off guard at first – almost like Harry was able to read his thoughts from a far. He knows he can’t – but he’s more than happy to know that the desire to be closer isn’t only burning inside of him.

“Of course,” He says as he gets up from laying across the couch and sits up, all the way to the edge to leave plenty of room. He’d figured he would sit all the way across the couch, thought he’d continue avoiding that touch that Louis wants so much; but, Harry sits much closer than Louis ever thought he would.

“So, every single kind of physical touch sends you into seeing your visions?” Louis asks, suddenly hyper aware of the closeness, of the smallest amount of physical contact between the two of them. He almost can’t help himself, like the words come out without his permission, slipping past his lips out of curiosity in way he doesn’t think he’s ever been bold enough to express. It almost feels odd, that their thighs are pressed together, and yet through the cloth Harry doesn’t have any reaction.

“Up to a point, yes. With my mom, with my sister, I don’t so much see things anymore. I think it’s just because they’ve touched me so much that perhaps my brain has kind of blocked the reaction out. But yes, with everyone else, even if I don’t want to, any kind of physical contact shows me everything.”

“Everything?”

“It’s like a flash. Depends on how long the contact goes for. The most important things, or the things that are weighing most heavily on someone’s mind tend to be the first things I see, which is why I can get confessions out of people so easily, even if my visions don’t hold up in court.”

“So, how would sex work, then?” Harry chuckles, his cheeks still pink from the wine. Louis’ filter tends to be the first thing that goes when he drinks, and this is no difference. He’s never been a mean drunk, but he asks questions that perhaps he knows he shouldn’t ask. Harry doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, though, but rather he seems to enjoy the banter, seems to feel comfortable enough that the questions don’t bother him.

“Sex is very, very interesting. I can feel everything that the other person is feeling, as well as everything I’m feeling, all at once, at the same time. It’s really rather mind blowing.”

“And the seeing things?”

“I’ve only ever been able to compare things like that to synaesthesia. I see colours of it - like I can feel the colours. When I’m not actively focusing on my visions, or if I’m uh, too distracted, it’s usually just flashes of different colours.”

Louis isn’t sure what he’s meant to do with this information, or what he thinks he should do with it. It’s a lot to take in, knowing that Harry would be able to see his thoughts if they were to touch if he concentrated on it, and he’s certain Harry knows that – knows it could cause hesitancy in someone. It’s intimate in a way he’s never thought possible, yet all the same it’s the kind of intimacy that he thinks he’s always craved.

It’s confusing – the way the thoughts of wanting Harry to touch him and wanting to not have to worry about it blend together so perfectly inside of his head that he can’t even tell them apart.

“It’s weird, right?” Harry says after a moment – just the briefest moment of silence that passes between them as Louis tries to take everything in.

“I’m not going to say it’s not. But. It very _you_ and you’re also a bit weird, and I like it.” That makes Harry smile just a bit, a wide, silly grin breaking out over his face. “What colour do you think kissing me would be?”

That, it seems, is all it takes to stun Harry silent.

“Orange, maybe. Yellow. Green.”

“Why?”

“Those are the happiest and most welcoming colours I can think of, and you’re all of those things.” Louis is smiling, and butterflies swell inside of his stomach. He hasn’t felt like this since he was a teenager, since before his first kiss, since he really had anything left to look forward to. Harry lights that desire back inside of him at full strength, brings back that boyish anticipation for _something_ and it burns bright.

He wants to say something silly – wants to pretend he has a witty comeback and can keep up with the way Harry’s mind seems to be able to run circles around his own – but all he can do is glance at Harry’s lips and feel his mind go entirely blank.

“Can I?” He asks instead, eloquence forgotten.

“Please,” Harry says, and that’s all it takes.

He doesn’t see flashes of colours when Harry finally leans in and closes the gap he’s been wanting to close since he got here, he doesn’t feel the emotions coursing through Harry, doesn’t think the thoughts he has inside of his head, but it still feels equally magical.

Harry’s lips are soft, gentle against his own and Louis never wants it to end. He’s slow, gentle, testing the waters as he moves to put an arm around Harry, holding him closer. Harry doesn’t push away and that’s more than enough for Louis to melt into it, to finally – _finally –_ feel like he can have this part of Harry he’s been longing for.

His eyes fall closed quickly – and the feeling of Harry’s hand touching his thigh, just a gentle, chaste touch, makes everything feel real. And reality, he’s decided, can be absolutely fantastic.

When Harry pulls away, there’s the same little smile on his face that Louis wants to see every day for the rest of time. It’s beautiful, with the bright green of his eyes shining bright under the artificial lights of the house and the slight red flush from the wine spreading over his cheeks. A little dimple pops out in only one of his cheeks, and it’s endearing.

“Very orange,” Harry says, and Louis can’t think of anything to do but smile.

He wakes up in the morning in Harry’s guest bed with beams of light streaming through the curtains he hadn’t closed the night before. The smallest moment of having forgotten where he is washes over him just for a moment, but it’s quickly remedied when he looks around and sees that he’s almost entirely surrounded by plants, flowers, and the smell of fresh mint.

Harry had said something the night before about finding a new obsession with mint, the smell, the feel, the taste in tea, and that’s what led him to bringing nearly a dozen of the purple-flowering little herbs to his home and placing them in the guest window. Louis takes a moment to breathe it all in, to focus on everything around him, to think of the happiness he’d felt last night, to feel the happiness he feels _now,_ and everything feels fine.

The killer, as much as he knows he’s still out there somewhere, isn’t the first thing on his mind in that moment.

It’s freeing.

He gets himself out of bed and brushes his teeth with the extra toothbrush Harry had opened up for him, then makes his way out to the kitchen. For some reason it surprises him to find Harry standing in his pajamas, cooking the two of them breakfast.

“Are you not ready to run out the door to work?”

“Well, it is Saturday, so, no.”

“Oh. I can’t remember the last time I got a weekend off just because it was a weekend.”

“How about right now? There’s no active killer, I have a laptop you can use to do your work if you need to, Zayn can call if he needs, and I’m making breakfast burritos so if that isn’t the most solid argument ever then I don’t know what is,” Harry says, rambling just a bit once again. Louis finds it endearing.

“You’re right. That’s the most convincing argument I’ve ever been presented with, so I guess you win.”

He has a feeling Harry will win a lot.

From there, it only starts to make sense.

Louis spends more time than he ever thought he would at Harry’s house. More time than he ever thought he would at _anyone’s_ house, really. He’s there almost every other night, and he and Harry see each other nearly every single night. Be it working together, brainstorming about the case, just talking, or just having a night in together. It all just feels right when he’s beside Harry.

It's a thought that comes easily, even if he never thought it would.

The thought of falling into step beside Harry’s life comes easier than he thinks it’s should, yet he can’t even think of it happening any other way. This feels right, feels like how it was always meant to happen.

Tension dissolves around them as the killer goes dormant.

A week goes on, then a week and a half, and almost all of them slowly start to believe that it’s done, that it’s come to an end. While the killer just disappearing wouldn’t be the ideal outcome of all of this, it’s still an endgame that doesn’t leave more bodies, and that’s an ending Louis can support no matter how it comes about.

“You could come to my hotel, you know. It doesn’t always have to be your place,” Louis says as Harry takes a drink of his sparkling water. _Sparkling water,_ Louis can’t help but think with a fond little smile. It’s something that he should have absolutely expected Harry to do, yet it never crossed his mind. They’re sat across from each other in a small, locally owned restaurant that Harry has sworn by. Louis understood almost immediately when they entered through the tiny little doorway and were greeted by a jukebox that still played records.

“Isn’t a real house a little nicer than a hotel room, though?”

“Suppose I can’t argue with that.” Harry flashes him another dimpled smile.

They dance together when _Still the One_ comes on, when their food is long gone. A few weird looks are tossed their way as the two of them go out into the little aisle between the seating and they dance, but neither of them care. Between dancing to songs they both like, they sit and drink fruity drinks that are far-too-expensive, all while they talk about everything and nothing and it’s impossibly perfect.

Harry makes him feel like there’s an entire universe out there, surrounding him from every edge at all times, all while he makes it feel like their little world with just the two of them in it is all that matters.

Maybe it is.

It’s a Friday night, just about two weeks after the last body was found, when Louis finds himself back on Harry’s couch once again. It’s something that’s slowly beginning to feel comfortable, to feel like it’s where he belongs. It’s a thought that he thinks – perhaps – should bother him. It’s almost odd that it doesn’t, but he’s beginning to think that everything about Harry is odd. It’s intoxicating in the best of ways.

Harry’s got his head resting in Louis’ lap as they watch a film, and it’s comfortable.

“Is this weird? How we went from hating each other practically to cuddling on your couch?”

“I don’t think so, no. I think it’s interesting. Character development or what not.”

“Yeah. I think Zayn thinks it’s weird. He keeps looking at me weird every time he sees me talking to you.”

“Didn’t you call him a nutcase or something when he said I was psychic the first time?” Louis pauses, laughing just a bit in embarrassment.

“Yeah, I might have.”

“Can I ask why you seemed so adamant on not believing me, though? Feel free not to answer. I’m just curious,” Harry asks, an arm over Louis’ shoulder. His eyes are closed as Harry’s finger tips come in the most brief little pieces of contact with Louis’ cloth covered skin. It’s the closest Harry seems to be willing to get to intimacy right now, and Louis respects it. He isn’t going to push or prod or do anything that would make Harry uncomfortable.

“Do you really want to know, or do you just want the… easy version?”

“Of course I want to know.”

Louis sighs.

It’s a conversation he doesn’t want to have - from a moment of his life he’s not proud of at all. Everyone has their things - the things in their life that claw at their throat just as the threat of being spoken about - the things that eat at them every moment until it’s forced to come out. This is one of those things for Louis.

“I was a freshman in college when my mom died,” He starts. “I actually started out doing a drama degree, in college.” Harry’s eyebrows raise just a bit, but it’s the only reaction the other man gives. “Two and a half months into the semester, my step dad calls me and tells me to come home that weekend, so I did. And he had to tell me that my mom had been killed in a bank robbery.” In his field of work, the reality of death, of the evils that humans commit against one another are constantly there, and yet the loss of his mother still haunts him worse than the worst of crimes he’s ever seen. “I felt so hopeless. My mom was my best friend in the entire world. There was - there was no one else I was that close with. I told her everything always and I wasn’t ready to let her go. So, I went online and found someone who promised that they could connect me with her again, after death.”

“Oh, Louis,” Harry says, and Louis’ sure that Harry can see where the story is going.

“They were a fake. If absolutely nothing else I really just wanted to say goodbye to her, to tell her I loved her one last time because I took it for granted every time I got to tell her that before.” He swallows, closes his eyes for a moment to fight back the threat of tears. “The psychic I went to was basically just telling me what I was telling her over and over again, and tried to charge me two hundred bucks to do that.” He shakes his head, still angry.

“There are a lot of fakes. More than enough to absolutely validate your original opinion. Thank you, for sharing that.”

“It’s alright now, I mean, because of that I decided to go into this field of work instead. So, I suppose everything happens for a reason, yeah?”

“I don’t think that, not anymore, but I’m glad everything worked out for you.”

“Me, too.”

  
  


“Louis?” Liam asks when he walks into the station, too early on a Monday morning for his brain to be entirely ready to process questions.

“What’s up?”

“Forgive me if I’m over-stepping, but can I ask about you and Harry?” It’s a question that he doesn’t mind hearing from Liam – just because of the years they’ve spent working together – but it’s something he fumbles over. Being confronted about something that he doesn’t even entirely know how to label just yet is something he wasn’t expecting. “Sorry if I’ve caught you a little off guard – I’ve just been wondering for a bit now.”

“No, yeah. You’re fine. Yeah, we’re friends.”

“Friends?”

“Yeah. Just friends.” Liam accepts this, but Louis can sense the hesitancy in it, can feel that he wants to press. But it’s almost odd that there is nothing _to_ press – they really are just friends, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Yet, the title of friends doesn’t sit well in his own stomach, either. It’s illogical and he’s fully aware of it, yet, it hurts all the same. But he just sighs as he makes his way through the front of the station, passing by the same windows, the same plaques, the same everything that he’s seen for over a month now, to the farthest back room of the winding halls.

As he gets closer, the slightly-too-loud sound of a familiar song playing fills the space around him. A little smile forms on his face as he gets closer and sees Harry sitting in the breakroom, elbows rested atop of the small table in the room as he eats a banana, bopping his head to the song.

“Are you seriously listening to Uptown Girl?” He asks in lieu of a greeting. Harry’s head tilts up as soon as he hears his voice, the same, fond, dimpled smile spreading across his face that Louis has grown to love.

“What else would I be listening to?”

“I don’t know, anything that was around when you were born?” Louis laughs, rolling his eyes fondly. “Were you even alive in ‘83?”

“Well, no. But there’s no way you were either!”

“Of course not. But I listen to music from my generation.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Harry asks, sticking his tongue out before he stands and comes up to Louis, doing a horrible little dance right in front of him to the beat of the song.

“If something like Jessie’s Girl comes on after this I’m taking over the radio station -”

“You sure you’re not the psychic?” Harry asks, snorting out what just might be the ugliest laugh Louis thinks he’s ever heard as the opening chords to Jessie’s Girl starts playing over the speakers. “There’s no way you don’t enjoy this. This is quality. Come on! Dance with me!” Harry swings his hips around a little more, still just as painfully bad, but it makes Louis laugh, too, and everything suddenly feels like it’s alright. Even if everything is wrong with the world on the outside, at least they can have this moment, can be here like this together.

Louis feels good in that moment, feels like maybe there is a way to come down from something that he’s been so miserable about. Harry had been most of the cause of his misery in the beginning, or so he thought, but as the passing days had gone on with him being on Harry’s good side, it was clear that that wasn’t the only reason he was unhappy. Whether or not there was some kind of self sabotage there, some kind of thing he did to make himself miserable, he doesn’t know, but he’s already feeling better.

Harry is a strange kind of calming presence.

He feels like he’s grounding all while he can still make Louis smile, almost every time, without fail. He understands, now, why he’d been such a massive hit with everyone, just with the way it seems easy for him to bring joy to a room effortlessly.

His phone starts ringing, the shrill tone breaking through the walls of the calm night they’d been having. He knows the only time his phone rings after six in the evening is when his boss is calling him, breaking through the _do not disturb_ function on his phone. Harry gives him a look as he grabs the remote and pauses the film.

“I’ll be right back.” Harry nods. He gets up and walks to the other room, just far enough away that he hopes Harry doesn’t have to listen, mostly because he knows he hates having to listen to others on the phone. “Tomlinson,” he answers the phone with, keeping his voice straight and calm despite the slight tinge of annoyance that’s firm in his chest.

“Hello Louis, I just wanted to ask about the status of your case.” It’s Nick Grimshaw’s voice on the other end of the line, a voice he’s come to know very well in his years in the bureau. The head of the political side, the head of his department, and the source of his head _aches._

“Right, of course. We’re still investigating, still trying to find a suspect that matches our profile. Our profile hasn’t been able to be completed due to the nature of the killings.”

“Your profile hasn’t been completed? It’s been a month.”

“Yes, sir, I’m aware.”

“And how long has it been since a body was discovered?” It’s the question he didn’t want to be asked. The question that he saw coming from the moment the phone started ringing, and for some reason it leaves a hole in his chest that he never thought it would.

“Three weeks, sir.”

“Right. The case is cold, Tomlinson. I expect you and your team back in the morning to get a new case with an active killer that requires your services.” Louis has to hold his breath to keep the sigh of sadness from escaping, but it only takes just a moment before he stomps down the pain in his chest enough to speak again.

“Of course. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Bright and early, Tomlinson. I expect you out on the field again as soon as a new case comes.”

“Of course.” Nick hangs up as soon as he says this, and Louis leans back against the wall, sighing softly as he squeezes his eyes shut. Holding the phone tightly in his hands, he takes a few moments to compose himself, to get himself back together before he makes his way back to the living room and takes his place back beside Harry.

“You’re sad,” Harry says, a statement of fact rather than a question. Perhaps he doesn’t need to be a psychic to sense that – not exactly – but sometimes it still manages to blow him away with exactly how intuitive he is.

“It’s been three weeks since he’s struck,” Louis says, shaking his head. “The bureau is sending us home tomorrow.” Louis can’t help the little frown, can’t help the sadness that pits itself in his chest when he hears the news, even if he’s happy that the murders have stopped. There’s just something that doesn’t feel right about leaving Harry, about leaving behind the little hick town that he’s been stuck in for longer than he ever thought he would want to be.

“What time tomorrow?”

“Nine in the morning.” Harry’s quiet for a while, almost like he’s just looking forward and watching the t.v. in front of him, but his gaze is downcast.

“Will you kiss me? Before you go?”

“Again? Greedy, are we?” Louis can’t help but tease, but he can see the way the pain manifests itself on Harry’s face, too. Separating was never meant to be this hard. There was never meant to be a separation at all.

“I mean for real this time. Nothing silly like before.” It nearly knocks the breath out of his lungs when he realizes that Harry was comfortable with the last time – enough to want to do it _again._ It shouldn’t feel so exciting, shouldn’t feel like his first kiss amplified one hundred fold, yet it does. Harry lights that boyish excitement inside of him in the best of ways.

“You mean tomorrow morning, or now?”

“Now, of course, you asshole,” Harry says, chuckling just a bit. It feels like a goodbye, like they’re just getting this out of their systems before they have to part ways forever. He thinks maybe that’s okay, maybe that’s something they just need to do to be able to let go. “Wait, before you do,” Harry says, and Louis looks at him with a fond smile. Harry’s eyes are a beautiful green from this close, where they’re just barely inches from each other.

“Yeah?”

“Think about something nice. I don’t want to see anything bad. Because I’m going to be thinking about you, and I know you’re sad about leaving and I’m sad about you leaving, and I want this to be something great.”

“How could I possibly see anything bad touching someone as beautiful as you?” This makes Harry blush just a little, but he rolls his eyes and softly punches Louis in the arm. He can’t help teasing, can’t help the little bits of humour that he hopes are going to make this easier. Nothing will make it _easy,_ but if he can make it even just slightly less painful – he’ll do anything he can.

“You cheesy fucker. We aren’t seventeen anymore.”

“Maybe not, doesn’t mean I can’t be cute.” Harry’s the one that leans in first, and Louis lets him. Lets him lead this, lets him take the control. He can almost feel the anxiety rippling off of Harry, can feel the way he’s tense, nervous, afraid of what he’s going to see when he finally touches him, but Louis isn’t afraid. He doesn’t know what Harry’s going to see, but there’s not a single thing that he thinks he doesn’t want him to see. Even like this. Even after only knowing each other such a short amount of time, he wants Harry to see everything. Especially, and most of all, he wants Harry to see that he’s genuine about this.

He pauses a moment, so close to Louis’ lips that he can feel the shaky, nervous exhale, and then their lips meet. It’s gentle at first, and Harry twitches with it, the same way he had when he touched the body that was on the ground at the crime scene that day, but then he melts into it.

Louis lets his eyes fall closed after that, wraps his arms around Harry’s neck and lets their skin meet. It’s an incredible feeling, something he knows he’s taken so much advantage of with every other person he’s ever known, that he’s ever had sex with, that he’s ever even just known as an acquaintance. Touching someone when he’s been denied it for so long - it all feels like it’s falling into place, like he knows these little things aren’t something that can be taken for granted ever again.

Harry runs a hand over the skin that’s showing where his shirt has slipped up over his wrists, traces the bone there with his thumb like he’s starved for it, starved for the touch. Louis can’t blame him, soaks up every bit of it that he can get with Harry.

It’s longer than it’s ever been for Louis of just kissing before Harry pulls away. His lips feel dry from it, but it’s a feeling he never wants to lose. Harry has a little smile on his face, but it matches the twinkle of happiness in his eyes and Louis never wants to leave.

It was a horrible idea, to think that he could just walk away after this, to think that he’ll be able to get on his plane tomorrow morning and never think of Harry again. It was an idea that he should have known would backfire - because there’s really no way a person couldn’t be drawn to Harry like this. There’s no way he should have let himself be blindsided like this, and yet now that he’s staring what feels like the end of something that could have been beautiful down, his heart aches.

“Stay, tonight?” Harry asks, his head tilted to the side just a bit. The smile’s gone, but there’s still that glimmer of happiness in his eyes, in the indents of the dimples on his cheeks.

“Always.”

  
  



	2. Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't already please do go back and read the authors note.

**HARRY**

He’s not sure what he was expecting to feel when Louis’ plane takes off. There’s no emptiness or overwhelming feeling of suffocation that he’d thought he might feel; but there’s no happiness or regret or, really, much of anything. He stands in the tiny airport terminal and watches out the window as the little, white private jet that both brought Louis here and took him away flies off.

It gets smaller and smaller in the sky the longer he stands there, and no matter how much he wills it to turn around, to come back, it never does.

The killer is gone, he reminds himself.

There’s no reason for him to feel sad - Louis not being here is a good thing. Louis being here just means something is very, very wrong. Yet at the same time, Louis being here also felt so right. It felt like comfortable nights spent in, like a blanket of safety.

He sends Louis a text – just a quick _ I hope you had a good flight! _ For when he lands – before he sticks his phone back in his pocket. Moving on won’t be easy, but it’s just another thing he’s going to have to do. So with a sigh, he goes on with his day.

“So,” Harry begins. The fall session at the state university has just begun, and his class is full of fresh faced kids who all think that they’re going to join the FBI, that all think they’re going to be the ones who save the day. “How do we define behaviour?” He asks, clapping his gloved hands together as he begins walking across the room, in front of the wall of chalkboard in front of him.

No hands raise with his first question, no one wanting to assert themselves so quickly into the year. It’s typical, very unextraordinary.

“Well, here’s an example for you. No one raised their hand. Not a single one of you out of a class of, what, three hundred?” Everyone starts to look around, as if making sure that each person surrounding them is on the same page. “That’s a form of behaviour, when you don’t want to stand out in the crowd, where you don’t want to draw attention to yourself as deviating your behaviours away from the mob, so you conform. No one has told you to do this, no one told you not to raise your hand, yet you didn’t.”

He scribbles down a definition onto the chalkboard of a definition of behaviour, before facing the class again. The projector shows a similar definition, too, but he’s always been the type of professor to test from his lectures instead of the slides.

“I know you’ve all taken intro to psych and I know you’ve all heard this time and time again, so I won’t bore you. We’re here for the good stuff, right, where we learn about what makes the bad guys bad and why they do what they do. So, give me some examples of how this example, something as menial as  what you’ve all just done, could apply to criminal behaviour?”

Several hands immediately fly into the air, and he smiles.

He finds himself sitting on his couch alone on a Friday night.

It’s a fairly typical thing for him – having an easy night in with some music or a film or a book. It’s something he’s done for a majority of his weekends throughout his entire life, and yet, there’s a feeling that pits itself inside of his chest that feels wrong. It feels like this isn’t what he wants to do anymore, feels like there’s something else he should be doing.

Of course, he knows it has everything to do with Louis and nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t enjoy his nights in, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. He misses Louis, even if he’s only been gone for a short amount of time. With the fall session of school only having just began, he doesn’t have any papers or tests to grade to busy himself with, so all he has is his mind. It’s not the best situation, at least not for him.

Louis had messaged him back as soon as his flight landed five days previous, and since then they’d only exchanged a few messages, but each message felt like a breath of relief from the loneliness that has been creeping up.

He messages him again, and gets almost an immediate reply.

_ Hi, Lou. What’s up? _ He types out, thumb hovering over the send button for a moment as he debates if he needs to change the nickname or not. He decides not to.

_ Hey! I just finished dinner, so now I’m just hanging out with my cat and some popcorn :-) _ He smiles. Conversation flows so easily between the two of them that sometimes Harry forgets that they’ve only known each other for such a short amount of time.

He feels like he’s known Louis for so much longer, like he already knows him well enough to justify how terribly he misses him, but he knows that’s not true. But as the hours tick by and the constant stream of text messages shared between them doesn’t die down, he can’t help but feel better. Even if just ever so slightly, the loneliness inside of his chest dims down enough that it’s not so overwhelming.

_ Guess I should head off to bed. Talk to you in the morning?  _ Louis sends once the clock passes one in the morning.

_ Good night, talk to you tomorrow! _ He sends in response.

It’s not typical that he stays up this late, and it’s certainly not typical that he stays up this late staring at his phone, but Louis has made him do more things than ever that are not typical. He’s stayed up, let him stay over, gone out to eat multiple times, let him touch him – all things that he typically wouldn’t do at all. Yet, Louis changed it all. Louis seems to change everything in the best way he could possibly imagine.

Harry only teaches classes three days a week, and his mom has always taken advantage of it. When Tuesday rolls around once again, it’s no different. She calls him up at ten in the morning and tells him that she’ll be seeing him for lunch, and he doesn’t deny her.

It’s another tradition that he’s almost gotten used to not following – with the chaos of the case that had taken over his life for the short amount of time that it did. But he’s quick to fall back in to step as he pulls the door open to the tiny café in the centre of town.

It’s a tiny shop with seating for barely twenty people inside, but his mom is already sitting in the back in their normal spot, chatting to the waitress that serves them every Tuesday.

“Hi, Anne!” He says with a smile to the waitress. The first time they came in the two of them had gotten a good laugh out of their matching names, and that was one of the things that made them decide to stay, to keep coming back on this specific day. “Hi, mom.” He takes his seat with a smile and grabs the cup of coffee that’s now the perfect temperature to drink since it’s been waiting for him.

“How are you doing love? You look well. Happy.” It’s been nearly a month since he’s seen his mother – which, in retrospect, isn’t a very long time. But they’ve always been close, a team, best friends in a way few others really understood. So, a month, for them, is far too long to go without one another.

“I’m good, yeah. The FBI finally left town since the case went cold, but school’s started up again, so I’m still kept busy. How’s Tinsel?”

“Continuing to remind me why an old woman should never adopt a kitten,” She says, taking a drink of her own milk coffee and laughing. “Last night she climbed up the curtains and jumped right on to my stomach while I was reading before bed.” That makes Harry laugh as he imagines it, a grin breaking out across his face.

“Wasn’t I the one who told you to get the old cat instead?”

“As if you weren’t drawn in just as much as I was by Tinsel’s beautiful little face. She just has to get some of her youth out of her and then she’ll be my perfect little cuddle buddy.” They talk for a long while before they order their food, about school, about her flower shop she owns, about his sister. It’s always been easy with her. No matter how long or how short the time between their visits is, it’s always been easy to talk and it’s something Harry has always been grateful for.

“So, I can tell there’s something weighing on your mind and I don’t think it’s school.”  Anne says, quirking an eyebrow as the dimple that matches his own forms on her face.

“Well, perhaps I might have met someone.” He pretends the surprise on her face doesn’t sting. It’s been long enough since he’s been in a relationship that he does understand the surprise factor of saying he’s met someone, but he hates being reminded of it, hates the reality that his condition has left him with far more limitations than anything else.

“Who is he, then?”

“Well he came with the FBI group that was investigating the case. His name is Louis Tomlinson.”

“I saw him on the news, when he was talking about the killer. He’s a catch.” She grins as she sticks a french fry in her mouth.

“Yeah, he absolutely is,” He says, smiling at the thought. He can’t deny how much he is attracted to Louis, and he certainly can’t deny it to his own mother. She’s always been painfully perceptive, which was a nuisance when he was a teenager, but only carried on to his adult life, too. “He left town, though, and I’m not sure when or if he’ll be back.”

“Then you go see him,” She says, shrugging, as if that’s the easiest thing in the world. But, maybe it is. Maybe he could just get on a plane and go see Louis. It really would be that easy. For some reason, that reality takes him by surprise, never having passed through his mind before.

“You know, I just might.”

They wrap up their lunch within just a few hours and then they’re parting ways. She hugs him tightly as they stand from the table.

He doesn’t notice there’s anyone behind him as he pulls away from the hug and the exposed skin on his arm brushes up against a waitress behind him and sends a quick flash of images across his vision – a child at home alone, a yelling man, bruises left only to be covered up by makeup.

He turns around with a start, and he can hear both the waitress and his mom asking if he’s alright – but it’s one of the more powerful visions he’s had in a long time, and it leaves him just ever so slightly disoriented. The waitress doesn’t seem to recognize him, doesn’t know who he is or the fact that he now knows what is likely her biggest secret.

“He’s fine, dear, he’s fine. Sorry about that.” He hears his mother saying before she’s sitting him back down with a gentle push against his shoulder.

It’s not often he gets such intense reactions to a light touch – but every time it happens it always leaves him feeling wrong for far too long afterwards. It leaves a pit of anxiety deep inside of his stomach only followed by a weird kind of nausea that never fully subsides.

“Harry, sweetheart, talk to me,” His mother says, waving her hand in front of his face.

“Sorry,” He finally chokes out after a few more moment.

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t ask what the vision was of. It’s been years since she asked because she knows she doesn’t want to know what Harry sees. It’s always too much and too difficult to describe, always too overwhelming and too personal to have to try and describe what he sees to someone who can’t see it themselves.

“Why don’t you come on home for a little while, yeah? I’ll take care of you for a bit. You’re still my little boy no matter how old you get, you know.” He laughs just a bit, a half smile spreading across his face.

“Alright, that sounds nice.”

Harry was six when he first remembers his mom telling him that he was special, that there was something about him that made him so, so very different from the other kids around him. He hadn’t understood it then, wouldn’t understand it for years, but something about that first time he stuck with him for years after. The way her voice was laced with a kind of fear, a kind of worry that he didn’t hear then, but only came to understand as the unforgiving years of figuring it out crashed through him.

He’d been at the park, playing with a few other boys his age, when one of them had touched him when they were passing a basketball around, and it sounded like he’d said something. “Is she okay?” Harry had asked - and the other boy on the playground froze.  His name was James.

“Who?” He’d asked, eyebrows downturned and an angry frown on his face. Harry had frowned, too, before he’d tilted his head to the side out of confusion.

“Your mom. Is she okay?”

“How the fuck do you know about my mom!” The boy had screamed, his voice high, screeching almost. You just told me - Harry tried to say - just said it out loud to everyone that she was ill, that she can’t walk anymore. Why wouldn’t I know? That’s what he wanted to say, but as soon as James pushed him down and kicked him in his stomach, the other boys were quick to join in.

He wasn’t allowed to play basketball with them anymore.

He didn’t understand it then, even as he walked home on painful knees with blood from catching himself on his fall dripping down his palms. When he’d walked inside of his kitchen to find his mom making him something for lunch, she had immediately grabbed him and cleaned his cuts up, pulled him on her lap and asking him what happened until he was crying.

“My sweet boy,” She’d said. He was crying, tears streaming down his face with his scraped knees and bloodied palms. “You have something so special about you. You don’t see it now, but one day you will.”

“Why don’t they like me anymore? I was just being nice.”

“They don’t understand you, love. I know it hurts. But there are nice boys out there who will understand you and be kind to you like you are to them. But never stop being kind to everyone, my love. Even if they aren’t to you.”

“I know mom, I love you.”

“And I love you, my boy. How about I run you a bath after we eat some lunch?” He nodded tears still running down his face.

Slowly, a schedule is created.

Harry both begins and ends his day talking to Louis, and it feels right in a way he never thought it would. He’d always had this thought in the back of his mind that speaking to someone so much would only leave him feeling suffocated, but somehow, he never tires of Louis. His previous boyfriend had always said he needed space, that Harry was too much that they were together too often that they talked too often. But now, as he sends what is likely his hundredth text message to Louis of the day and gets yet another enthusiastic reply, he realizes that none of that had been true.

Perhaps he had been too much for him but for Louis, he’s just right, it seems.

It’s that thought that sends a warm wave of happiness through his entire body, that makes him feel whole, complete, good in more ways than he ever thought possible.

I want to kiss you again you know :( Louis sends, making Harry quirk an eyebrow as he reads it.

Just kiss? He hits send before he can think twice of it, and bites his bottom lip between his teeth as he watches the little bubble pop up, filled with three dots to show Louis is typing.

Wish you could come touch me so you could see what I want to do to you

Well that – that takes Harry a little more by surprise than he thought it would. His face heats up just a bit with the thought of it, and he’s slow in palming himself through the material of his sweats. He thinks they’ve passed that line – passed the line where they shouldn’t say these types of things – and he’s never been so happy to pass a line.

Don’t think you need to show me. He sends as his first message, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. Tell me what you want.

He’s half hard already, just from the thought of it, from the thought of Louis being hard, too, of touching himself to the thoughts of having him in his bed. There’s something unexplainably exhilarating about having that kind of effect on another person, about having the kind of effect on someone as collected as Louis.

Then, his phone starts ringing – and it shouldn’t surprise him, but it does. It’s so entirely predictable that Louis would call, would want to talk through getting each other off in a way they’ve never experienced together.

“Hi,” Harry says into the phone as he brings it up to his ear.

“Hi,” Louis says on the other end, voice high and breathy already. Harry has to bite his lip again. His mind immediately goes to the thought of Louis already touching himself, of the vision of his hand on his cock as he tries to talk a stream of coherent thought on the line. He sets the phone down on the pillow next to him, tapping the speaker button and watching as the icon turns white.

“I believe you were going to tell me what you want to do to me,” He says as he grabs himself through the material of his sweat pants, stifling the sigh of relief that wants to slip past his lips.

“God, Harry, don’t think you realize exactly how much I want to touch you.” Harry swallows hard, leans back against his headboard and closes his eyes as he tries to imagine it. It’s odd – a world entirely different than what he’s used to. He’s never done this, never had someone talk him off over the phone, never had someone so far away that he’s longed to touch. “Been dreaming about that little arse of yours all day, thinking about eating you out, listening to those little noises you were making just when I was kissing you, can’t imagine how you’d sound all fucked out and desperate.” That stuns Harry silent. He can imagine it – can see himself needy and desperate with the way Louis would probably tease him. Heat pools in his belly just at the thought of it, of being under Louis’ watchful gaze as he fell apart. “Are you touching yourself now, baby?” He thinks if he listens closely enough he can hear the slick slide of skin from Louis’ hand against his own cock, and it makes his own twitch, desperate for attention.  

“Yeah,” He says with a shaky breath as he reaches into his pants and pulls out his dick, stroking it a few times with a dry hand. He can imagine Louis doing the same – can imagine the teasing and the fleeting touches, the quick bursts of pleasure that would follow by long draws of teasing.

“What are you thinking about?” His face burns hot as he thinks about it. Thinks about Louis holding him down and making him take what he gives him – but he isn’t exactly sure if that’s something he can say. If that’s something Louis would take well. He’s so used to knowing how people feel, to being able to see and understand how people feel, that in this moment he feels more out of the loop than he ever has. He can’t see what Louis is feeling, can’t even see his expressions to gauge how he’s feeling. “Haz? You alright?”

“’m good, Lou. Was just…”

“Just?”

“I can’t like – see you, right. So please tell me if you don’t want to or don’t like it but – I’d really like it if you,” He pauses for a moment, trying to put the pieces of what he wants to say together in his mind. Everything always seems to fit perfectly together in his mind and gets mixed up when it leaves his mouth. “I’d like it if you maybe told me what to do a little?”

The other end of the line is almost too quiet for comfort for just a few moments, and a hundred thousand thoughts of how he just fucked it all up, fucked everything up that he had with Louis and could have had with Louis course through his head at light speed.

“Want me to tell you how to get yourself off?” Louis finally asks and a heavy weight feels like it’s lifted off of Harry’s shoulders all at once.

“Yeah, yeah - yes.” Harry’s breath hitches as the words come tumbling out. He relaxes into the bed, Louis’ question easing his anxiety. The room feels ten degrees warmer - and Harry’s cheeks pink up with the feeling of it. “Please,” He says, and it feels so right to  _ ask. _

“ _ Baby _ .” Louis’ voice comes out wrecked, and it makes Harry feel better, knowing that he’s not the only one affected by this. “Can you start with getting yourself wet for me?” It’s a direct order - something that Louis is  _ telling  _ him to do, yet the words feel fuzzy, slow to come to any kind of order inside of his brain. It takes him a few seconds to fully process it before he’s fumbling over his own words all over again, mumbling out some kind of acknowledgement that he hopes is somewhere between a  _ yes  _ and  _ okay  _ before he’s reaching into his drawer and bringing out a bottle of lube.

He uncaps the lube and the cap opens with a little  _ snick,  _ echoing through the room _. _

He’s liberal with it as he pours the clear liquid over his palm and rubs his fingers together, heating it up. Louis’ breathing is still laboured on the other end, but the sound of skin sliding against skin has slowed to a more teasing pace, like he’s waiting for him. It sends another wave of dizziness through him, sends him sinking further into the headspace he’s been slowly slipping into, more so as he realises that Louis is holding off his own pleasure to wait for Harry’s.

“Done, love?” Louis’ voice comes through the line again, startling Harry out of that thought. “Got your hands all wet for me? How about you get a hand on your cock yeah?” Harry’s hand moves on with barely a thought, as he grips himself fully. The lube creates an easy slide as he starts with a slow, almost hesitant stroke of his hand.

“Harry?” Louis’ voice comes through again, softer. “You alright?”

“Always alright with you,” He replies easily, “Bit overwhelmed is all, this is all - I like this. A lot.” His sentences are choppy as he tries to figure out how to say what he’s feeling - how to tell Louis he’s  _ fine  _ \- that he’s not fragile, that he wants,  _ needs  _ to be roughed up a bit. It’s one of those things that he finds himself thinking of regularly, how much he wants to be held down, fucked, told what to do and how to take it - but those are the types of things he can’t say out loud. That he can’t bring himself to articulate the way he so desperately wants to without sounding like a freak.

“Yeah? Wish I could show you how much I like it too, show you how much you turn me on, baby,” Louis says, and his voice is lower than normal, laced with a hint of dominance that Harry’s only heard him use when he was angry at a coworker, yet still never to this extent. Never to the extent where Harry wants nothing more than to drop to his knees for Louis, wants nothing more than to give and to let Louis  _ take.  _ “Tell me what you’re doing.”

The embarrassment of it blooms hot in Harry’s chest - the  _ humiliation  _ of it - and it feels good in a way he never thought it could. “Touching - slowly. Trying to match you.”

“Touching where, love? Your cock?” Harry has to squeeze his eyes shut as he runs his hand up again and squeezes softly at the head of his cock, feels a few drops of precome slide from the tip already. Louis already has him worked up, already has him high on a wire that he’d feel dangerous on if he wasn’t held tight, held secure by Louis. He’s already so fucked out and they’ve barely started - Louis’ barely even called him any pet names and he’s already lost for it, gone for every single thing Louis can offer him.

“Yeah,” He says, vocabulary reduced to just a few select words when he’s turned on like this. “Feels really nice, thinking about you and how much I want to touch you.”

“You want to touch me love? Don’t want me to just hold you down and not let you touch?” Those are the exact words Harry has been dying to hear for longer than he can put in to words, and the moment he hears them everything suddenly relaxes, feels lighter than it ever has, just from the thought that he and Louis are on the same page, the same stream of thought.  Harry’s breath catches on a sharp inhale. Louis picks up on it - picks up on the vulnerability, on the way that gets to Harry in all the right ways. “Jerk yourself off faster now, Haz. Want to hear your pretty little noises.”

He bites his bottom lip between his teeth as he spreads his thighs wider on reflex, his hand moving fast over his cock. His right leg twitches against the sensation and his head falls back against the headboard with a soft thud. He can still hear the punishingly slow slide of Louis’ hand, just the softest reminder that he’s there, too, listening, just as affected by all of this as he is.

“Feel good love? Need you to tell me when you’re close, alright?” Another direct command and all Harry can do is whine out a short  _ yes  _ in response. He doesn’t remember touching himself being this nice, feeling this good, feeling like the room is on fire and he’s going to be consumed with it.

It’s embarrassing how close he is so soon into it, but he swallows down his pride just for a moment, “Close already, fuck,” He moans again with the feeling of it as he rubs his still slick palm over the head of his cock again and it twitches against his hand.

“Want you to stop now, baby.”

That’s -  _ what? _

His hand comes to a halt before his mind fully comprehends the command, and he hears a short, low moan from Louis on the other end of the line.

“Slow again now, but don’t come without my permission.” Harry makes a noise of affirmation as he continues the slow drags on his dick. “Good boy.” Harry whines, high in his throat at the praise. He wants to be Louis’ good boy for the rest of his life, and he doesn’t have time to process what that even  _ means _ before Louis’ speaking again.

“Always my good boy.” Louis’ voice has an edge to it that has him sinking further into his head, his thoughts so hazy he can’t think about doing anything other than being good. The thought of being good for Louis is intoxicating - drags him under in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever felt - takes him somewhere deep inside of his head he’s never quite been. “Budge up, lay flat on your back now. You’ve been such a good boy for me, think you deserve to finger yourself.” The words fall from Louis’ mouth so easily, as if practiced in a way Harry could only begin to imagine. He imagines what it would be like to be completely surrounded by Louis, what it would feel like to really have him here, whispering these things in his ear as he watched.

The bubbling edge of the orgasm Louis had refused him still sits sharp in his stomach, and every muscle there is tight, tense with the thought of having to stave it off. He’s never been one for edging himself like this – never thought that it was going to be worth it in the end, yet now, with Louis’ panting in his ear and the orders being so sweetly whispered through the phone, he sees the appeal.

“How many?” He asks, biting his lip as he rubs the still-there lube over his fingers.

“Start with one, love,” Louis says and Harry’s quick to bring his feet flat on the bed and move himself down for a more comfortable angle. He wastes no time in circling a single finger around the rim of his hole, gasping at the feeling. It’s been so long since anyone has touched him there – so long since he’s even done it to himself – that it almost feels brand new.

Louis moans on the other end, like he’s finally focusing on himself, and the noise almost catches Harry off guard. His voice is lower with it, deep and breathy yet still so beautifully expressive. It makes his cock twitch and he finally presses a single finger inside of himself, all the way to the knuckle.

It doesn’t immediately feel good, not in the way he knows it would if he did it more often, but it doesn’t hurt – doesn’t feel uncomfortable. So he drags it out, angling it right in the way he knows he’ll brush right against his prostate.

As always, for the first moment, the feeling takes him off guard, and he exhales a shaky moan. “Feel good, love?” Louis’ voice isn’t so steady this time when he speaks, but rather it’s clear how turned on he is, how much he’s affected by this, too.

“It’s good, yeah, feels really nice.” He’s not lying – with his eyes closed and head still tossed back as he rubs a single finger right against that little spot deep inside of himself. He’s impatient now, unwilling to keep himself away from that peak that feels so close yet still so far, too far away. Each exhale is shaky, loud in the room only otherwise filled with Louis’ matching desperation.

“Add a second finger.” He moans out some kind of affirmation, but it’s more of a hum than anything as he easily slides a second lubed finger beside the first. It takes a few seconds to adjust to the feeling, and he can feel the beginnings of a cramp in his wrist, but he trusts Louis. Trusts him enough to know he wouldn’t be telling him to do these things without some kind of reason. “Rub both of those against your spot, love. Keep them there.”

His toes curl as he does, the sensation like a live wire through his entire body. It’s hot, his skin feels flushed and sweaty, and the same feeling of being so,  _ so  _ close resurfaces with each rub of his fingers against the sensitive little bundle of nerves inside of him.

“Close yet, baby?”

“ _ Fuck,  _ so close, so close –“

“Don’t stop, use your other hand to squeeze the base of your pretty little cock. Don’t come before I have.” His other hand feels like deadweight as the command processes inside of his head. His mouth feels dry with the thought, and his thighs are already shaking, twitching from how turned on he is, from how much he wants to come. “Can you do that for me baby? Keep being my good boy and wait for me to come first?” He whines, too loud and too vulnerable in the emptiness of the room, before mumbling  _ yes. _

As it turns out, squeezing himself doesn’t ease the feeling.

It leaves him feeling like he’s just barely hanging off the edge, that he could let go at any moment, yet he  _ can’t. _

“So close, love, you’re doing so good for me, my good boy, you’re gonna feel so good when you finally get to –“ Louis cuts off, leaving the room quiet and Harry’s desperate little moans and whines fill the room once again. He’s almost certain Louis had just come, that he’d finally gotten to his peak and that he’d be next, but he didn’t want to come without being told.

Without being given  _ permission. _

“Come for me, love.” Louis whispers into the receiver, and that’s all Harry needs. He takes away his hand from the base of his cock and moves to stroke himself instead, and that, mixed with the feeling of his fingers still against his prostate, has him coming harder than he thinks he ever has.

It knocks his breath out of his lungs for just a moment as he lays limp, motionless on his mattress. It takes a few more deep breaths, a few more exhales, before he finally comes all the way down from the high, but he can’t help but smile once he does.

“You feel okay?” Louis asks, something that almost sounds like concern lining his voice. “Think I got a little erm, carried away, there. I normally wouldn’t – I  _ shouldn’t  _ have done that when I’m not there to make sure you’re alright. I’m sorry.”

“I’m great, Lou. Really. Never really saw myself as the phone sex type but I definitely have to say that was pretty good.” He feels bad for Louis being worried, but he understands.

“Just  _ pretty  _ good?” He teases, returning to himself, even if Harry’s almost certain that he still feels some weird form of guilt.

“A solid nine and a half out of ten.” He laughs a bit. “But no, really, Louis. Nothing to be sorry for. I could have stopped you if I was uncomfortable, which I wasn’t at any time. It’s alright. Really.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.”

“I am.” Louis yawns on the other end, but it’s muffled, like he’d put his hand over his mouth. “Tired?”

“Yeah, ‘s been a pretty long day. Was actually falling asleep before you started dirty texting me like a little minx.” That draws an ugly, snorting laugh out of Harry, and he smiles against his pillow. He feels like a boy all over again, like a silly teenager with a crush on the hottest boy in school. With a warm, pink blush all over his face, hiding it as if Louis could see.

“Mm, well I’m always here to keep you awake when you need it. But for now I think you should get some sleep. I need to shower anyway. Text me in the morning?”

“Alright, H. Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Good night.” Even after he hangs up the phone, he’s still smiling. Something about Louis leaves almost a giddy feeling inside of his stomach, leaves him feeling like he’s cherished in a way he’s never felt. It’s one of the best feeling he’s ever had.

\---

A new girl came to Harry’s school on a Wednesday, five and a half weeks into the second semester of eighth grade. School had already been in session long enough that introductions had been made, friend groups had been formed, groups solidified in the strongest of ways that middle schoolers could create. Only Harry didn’t have a group, didn’t have his friends that would greet him in the mornings and sit with him at lunch or come to his house for games after school.

He’d gotten used to that, over the years, as time went on. The loneliness didn’t feel as overwhelming as he got used to being alone with his thoughts, but the moment he saw the new girl, walking along the hallway, he knew there was something about the two of them that would just  _ click  _ in the exact way his mom had been promising for years.

She was pretty, with gentle brown eyes and long, red hair that went almost all the way down to her waist. Her bag was bright lime green, with little pins and patches from all kinds of television shows that Harry recognized well, and he had immediately wanted to be her friend. He immediately knew that they would get along, if she would give him a chance. Perhaps it was a kind of cocky assumption, or maybe it was the loneliness finally creeping into his head, but he wanted nothing more in that moment than to be her friend.

There was a kind of energy about her that just seemed to draw Harry in, like he couldn’t stay away even if he wanted to.

So he didn’t.

A teacher had walked her down the hall and showed her everywhere that she was going to be having her classes, but as soon as he the teacher had finished, and Harry decided to take that as his chance to make a friend. It wasn’t a risk he took often – his only friend ever having been the same boy that they went to church with when he was a child.

He was always somewhat of the weird kid in school. Growing up with the same two hundred kids in a small school district, he’d never gotten the chance to really prove that he wasn’t. But with a new girl coming to school, he saw his chance. So, as she went to her locker, opening the little lock and getting the metal door open, Harry introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m Harry,” he said, smiling, holding onto the books in his hands that needed to go in his own locker. It was all the way across the hall, but talking to the girl seemed much more interesting than putting books away, anyway. “I uhm, I saw Mr. Levi showing you around. So um. I thought I’d come introduce myself.” Completely ignoring his awkward stammering, she had smiled and everything finally felt like it was going to be okay.

“Hi, Harry. I’m Eden.” She stuck her hand out, and her chipped red nail polish didn’t seem to bother her at all. When Harry’s gloved hand had met her own and she didn’t say anything about it, Harry hadn’t been able to keep the smile off of his face.

\---

“So,” Zayn starts as he takes a large chunk of the cookie on his plate and puts it in his mouth.

“So,” Harry mimics, pulling out the chair at his dining room table across from his friend and setting his mug of tea down on a coaster.

“You and Louis are like, an item now?”

“Well, not officially, no. But I’m just trying to build up the confidence to ask him, I think.” He says but he still smiles, the same thoughts that have clouded his mind for weeks about the other man flooding back at full force. Everything about Louis just makes him glow, makes him happy in a way he can’t even begin to describe.

“You think he’ll say yes?”

“I do, yeah. I mean – we talk like, every day. I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”

“I’m really happy for you, you know that Haz? I’m really glad that you’re finally happy.” Harry just smiles and takes a drink of his tea before he looks out the window. Zayn’s words mean a lot more to him than he ever thought they would, and he can’t help but feel a kind of boyish joy that spreads through him just at the thought of it. He really  _ is  _ happy. Something has changed since he started spending time with Louis – since he started finding joy in another person instead of just keeping to himself quietly.

“I’m happy too.”

“And how have things been otherwise? How’s your head?” It’s a question that doesn’t take him off guard anymore – not since the two of them had had their first fight about it. He knows Zayn just genuinely cares about him and wants to know how he’s doing, and that’s the reason he asks. There’s no malice behind it, and Harry just shrugs.

“Not perfect, not the worst it’s been, either. I’m handling myself.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, it got kind of weird for a while right after Louis left, ‘cause I was a little lonely for some reason. But I’ve calmed down now.” Zayn takes a quick glance around the house, like he’s just making sure that Harry is telling the truth, but it still doesn’t offend him. “And you? How’s life been going?”

“Really good, I think. My mom is going to come out and visit next month, so I’m going to take some time off of work for that. I’m hoping that my sister can make it out as well, but we all know how that goes.”

“Did she have her baby yet?”

“Yeah, like, three weeks ago I think? It’s a boy, and they named him Phillip.”

“I don’t think you’d want a newborn at your house, Zayn. She’ll be exhausted and I’m sure you wouldn’t like being kept up all hours of the night, either.” This makes Zayn laugh just a bit, but he’s smiling.

“Yeah, suppose you’re right. Typical.” Harry rolls his eyes.

  
  


He talks to Louis every morning before class and finishes off almost every evening on the phone with him.

There are days when they can’t be on the phone – either because one or both of them are too tired or just too busy – but it’s almost every night that they talk and it’s enough to ease the loneliness that creeps up in his mind at night.

The term goes on slowly and he knows that it’s only going to keep creeping on slowly until the end of the semester.

He tries to sympathize, tries his best to remember how much he got antsy when he was in university to get out for break. But as he stands at the front of his lecture hall with the power point on display and the three hundred kids in their seats in front of him continue to talk, his patience wears thin. So, he waits. It takes almost an entire two minutes for the class to calm down, and he skips the first three slides to make up for the time lost to the talking, and continues from there.

He’s never claimed to be the best professor in the entire world.

But as soon as he gets home, he almost feels like a new person, like there’s nothing that could ever go wrong in the world. It’s a sudden feeling and he can’t quite pinpoint exactly why it’s there, but as he sits himself down and makes a cup of tea – the same brand that he’d gotten hooked on while Louis was here – he can’t help but think it might be because of Louis.

It almost seems that every thought leads back to him, that every conscious moment of his day is spent thinking of him in one way or another. He’s gotten more attached than he thinks he ever has of another person in such a short period of time, yet he doesn’t feel rushed, doesn’t feel pressured, doesn’t even feel embarrassed of it. Rather, he thinks that it’s a perfectly natural progression, something that was completely bound to happen with how much time they’ve spent talking.

He thinks, briefly, that he might be in love with Louis.

The thought doesn’t even take him by surprise, but rather it’s a gradual realization that comes to him slowly. It’s almost like waking up from a long nap and having to remember where he is and how he got there, but once it settles in, the reality is there, right at the very forefront of his mind. Being in love with Louis feels like the only option, like the only outcome that ever could have come, and it feels so perfectly  _ right. _

There’s not a single thing about it that feels wrong or weird.

He sits back against his couch, cup of tea in his hands nearly gone cold, as he tries to think of all of the odds and ends that led him here. Louis – being the loud, vibrant ball of energy that he’s known for the last few months – is so captivating, so unique, so perfectly in sync with Harry that they came together, and it was like there had never been a time when they were apart.

He’d never quite experienced something so powerful like that.

Never had the feeling that, even through such a short period of time, it felt more  _ right  _ to be with a person than it feels to be away from them. Being with Louis – be that on the phone or in person – feels like he’s in the right place, doing the right thing, having the right feelings.

The feeling of love seeps slow in his chest, having to filter through bone and flesh before it floods fully in his heart. But once it plants itself there, it takes root and blooms into a feeling Harry knows he’ll never be able to get rid of.

“Oh,” he says out loud to the empty room around him. “Oh, I love him.” He has to say it, like the need to say it out loud completely overpowers his thoughts. Like the feeling can’t just be contained to himself, like he has to release some of the feelings into the world or else he might combust, unable to hold it all so tightly inside of him. “I love Louis.”

He thinks his plants probably already knew, long before he was even aware, but telling them – telling the walls, telling the universe in the full feeling of certainty that he has about it, feels freeing.

He stays like that on the couch for a long while, taking in the new feeling and letting himself fully feel it. He lets it take over and spread throughout every piece of him, and all he can do is smile.

Two days go by before Harry has fully taken it all in.

He doesn’t tell Louis, knows that’s something he wants to save until they’re together in person, but he thinks he says it in other ways. He asks Louis how his day was, if he’s eating, if he’s seen his siblings lately. In any way that Louis is happy, Harry wants to know. He wants to know everything there is to know about the other man’s life, even if they’re separated farther than he’s ever wanted to be from someone he loves.

Growing up in a small town, he’s never had to be far from anyone he cares about.

His mom lives down the street, just a ten minute walk or a three minute drive. His best friend all through high school had lived eight houses down and his last boyfriend had been barely a fifteen minute drive away.

It was the little things like that that he’d gotten used to throughout his life, that he’d let himself get spoiled with, until now.

_ Want to skype?  _ He sends in a text before he can really think much of it. He craves seeing Louis face to face, craves seeing his expressions when he hears his voice, and those are all the things he never thought he would miss quite this much when he thought about having a long distance relationship.

He doesn’t get a response in a text, but he sees Louis go online on skype less than a few minutes later, and then he’s calling him.

He can’t explain the flop that his heart does when he first sees Louis’ face for the first time in far too long. He looks tired, like he’s been working too hard, but that’s just a part of who Louis is, another part that Harry has so slowly started to love. “Hey,” He says, a smile taking over his face.

“Hey,” Louis mimics. He’s laying back in bed, with the covers pulled up over his clearly bare chest, and there are headphones dangling from his ears. Harry’s in the same boat – only in his boxers but not buried under the same amount of covers. Even with his fan above his bed on full blast, the humidity is still thick.

“Where does work have you now?”

“Washington state, this time. It’s weird because like, it’s humid, but also dry at the same time? But the weather is nice, so at least I’m not burning.” He laughs, smiling at the memories of how much Louis had complained when he was in town.

“Is that you saying that you don’t want to come back to the beautiful town of Twin Lakes?” Harry asked, laughing just a bit. He loved to tease Louis about how clear he’d made his discomfort when he was in his home town, just because he loved how it made Louis smile.

“Suppose I could come back if it meant I’d get to see you.”

“I mean, my house  _ does  _ have air conditioning.”

“And a constant stream of baked goods.”

“That, too,” He said with a grin. “Can’t believe it’s been less than a week since I saw you. I mean, like, is it irrational that I miss you already? Cause I definitely do,” He admits, a light blush creeping over his cheeks as he does. He doesn’t need to tell the other man exactly how much he’s felt the wave of loneliness from missing him, about how his house feels empty without someone else to fill it, about how he wants nothing more than to wake up beside him again, even if he wants to. Louis doesn’t answer for a moment, but there’s a fond little smile on his face that makes Harry’s stomach do yet another flop that he can’t really explain. Louis makes him feel all kinds of things that he doesn’t know how to explain. It’s an incredible feeling and something he doesn’t think he could give up even if he wanted to.

“I miss kissing you, you know? Was just thinking about that earlier today.”

“Hm, do you now? Tell me more,” Harry says, grinning as he wiggles his eyebrows.

“Always want more, don’t you? Greedy boy.” It’s just meant as a tease, but the familiarity of the phrase sends Harry’s mind spiraling. He scrapes his teeth along his bottom lip and watches the way Louis quirks an eyebrow. “Is it really that easy to get you going?”

“What can I say? I’m young and insatiable.” A little laugh bubbled from Louis, then, and Harry couldn’t help but smile.

“You want to touch yourself for me love? Be good for me?” Louis asked, a little smirk spreading over his face. Harry bit his lip as his stomach did another flip, but it wasn’t the same feeling. It was more of a feeling of anxiety, of something he couldn’t really explain, even to himself. Even with the idea of Louis dominating him, of telling him what to do, of calling him  _ his,  _ he could usually get himself off just fine. Yet something about that night, about the mood that surrounded him in his room. It was the kind of night where he just wanted something easy going and laid back – where he just wanted to be able to enjoy some time beside Louis.

“Would it – would it be alright if we didn’t? Like – do that? I obviously love that, but like – maybe not tonight.” Louis’ face softened at Harry’s words almost immediately, and he felt a wave of shame wash over him. He couldn’t help but wonder if Louis was already just doing this to please him – if he was going out of his way to do something just to make him happy.

“Of course, love. Maybe we should have talked a little more about this before.”

“No, no it’s – well I mean yeah we probably should have – but. Don’t feel bad or anything.”

“Alright, love.”

“Have I gone and killed the mood, then?” He asked, a bit sheepish. He’d never had to do something quite like that before – never had to stop a scene and see if there would be a way to restart it, but the trust he holds for Louis made him feel more than safe being able to do that. Even if the awkwardness that engulfs the room now makes him cringe, just a bit.

“No, of course not. You talking to me and telling me what you need is important. I’d never say you ruined anything just by being vocal about what you need.” Harry’s stomach did another flip. Even in the moments just like this, when he has Louis so close to him, he can’t help but wonder if he’s even real. A part of him almost can’t believe that he has someone as perfect and understanding and just as  _ good  _ as Louis is. “So, what  _ do  _ you need tonight, then?” Harry’s face flushed, another dusting of heat as he looked and saw the still soft smile on Louis’ face, with that flame of adoration still permanently inside of the blue of his eyes.

“Just want to get off with you.”

“Together, then?” Louis’ head is tilted slightly to the side, with his signature fond smile spread across his lips, and the net of safety that Harry has grown so familiar with wraps around him all over again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Louis moved his laptop back, then, to rest back beside him, the lid held up at just the right angle to keep a view of his entire body, from his thighs up. It’s a slightly awkward angle, with the lid of the laptop tilted back to be looking up at him, but the focus of it is right on his cock – and that familiar wave of heat settles itself right in Harry’s stomach once again.

“You want to watch a bit?” Louis asks, but the tone of dominance that he usually has is just replaced by some easy softness that settles in his voice. Even from the awkward angle of the camera on his face, he can still see the fondness there.

“Yeah,” He responds again, just because Louis has this ability to strip every word from his vocabulary out of his mind, to turn him into a mess with just a single gaze or a few words strung together in just the right way to get him worked up.

So he watches as Louis works his hand over his cock, flicks his wrist in short, sporadic movements with no sense of pattern. He’s hard, thick and twitching in his hand, and Harry wants nothing more than to be there beside him, wants to hold and touch him and tell him he loves him.

He moves his own laptop to rest at the foot of his bed and sees the way Louis hesitates for just a moment before he shucks off his boxers and tosses them somewhere to the side, not thinking about that for a moment. Louis hesitates on the screen and Harry can’t help the little smirk that spreads across his face as he watches the way his hand loses its rhythm just for a moment, before his gaze locks on harry.

“You’re so beautiful,” Louis says, and Harry bites his lip as he grabs his own cock, hard and leaking already in his hand, and he thumbs over the slit. “Always so beautiful for me, you know that? You’re just – so perfect.” He’d learned in the beginning that Louis likes to talk during sex, that he likes to let him know every thought going through his head, and Harry loves it. Loves the idea that he’s the only one on Louis’ mind, that he’s so overtaken by it all that he can’t help but say it out loud. It’s overwhelming in a way he’s never quite experienced with another person, and he never wants it to end.

He tugs himself off in quick succession, with no desire to tease himself this time. There’s nothing about that night that leaves him wanting to feel like he’s waiting, like he needs to wait for something better of bigger or more grand, but rather he just wants to be able to have this moment with Louis, to be able to share normal couple things with Louis, even if it has to be through a screen.

“Close already,” He says before long, just a murmur of gentle, breathlessness as he leans his head back. His breaths come out in gentle gasps as the heat coils tighter in his stomach, burning red hot around him. Louis’ moans fill the space around him, with little whispers of Harry’s name between them, and that’s what eventually sends him tumbling over the edge.

Louis follows shortly after with a gasp, and Harry watches as he works himself through the aftershocks of it, and he has a sleepy smile on his face. There’s something about him like that – laying in his bed completely naked, spatters of come on his chest, with his hair tossed about, that Harry thinks is beyond beautiful. There’s just something about it that leaves him breathless, leaves him feeling like he could look forever and never stop looking – leaves him feeling like he’s at  _ home. _

“How are you doing?” Louis asks, then, and his voice is still lower in the way it seems to always be right after he’s come.

“I’m good. Yeah. Really good,” He says, smiling just a bit. He feels boneless and soft, ready to sleep all while not quite being ready to say goodbye to Louis.

“Should we talk about what happened?”

“Yeah, suppose we should,” Harry says and rubs at his eyes with his knuckles, trying to will his body into not being as exhausted as he feels. “I’d say nine times out of ten I want to fall into that role of either submissive or dominant.”

“ _ Or  _ dominant?” Louis asks, a soft smile on his face, the same smile that’s always there when he’s curious about something.

“Yeah. Can’t say there aren’t going to be times when I might want to rough you up a bit.” They both laugh at that, and Harry is still smiling. “I mean, if that’s something you’re ever interested in.”

“I’m open to anything. But, back to tonight, yeah?”

“Right, yeah. Tonight was just one of those times where I didn’t want that. Just want to spend a moment with  _ you  _ not with dom you, you know?”

“It’s always just me, baby. I’m always here.”

“I know. I know – it’s just,” He starts, but he doesn’t fully know how to explain himself.

“I know. It’s alright. Hey, don’t overthink it, alright? Whenever you say you don’t want something I don’t need an explanation. I just wanted to understand, make sure I didn’t push any boundaries.”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“Alright, good.” There’s a short pause between them, then, as Louis yawns, but then he’s talking again and capturing Harry’s full attention all over again. “So, I know there are plenty more romantic ways to ask this,” Louis starts, “And almost every single one of them wouldn’t include you seeing me with drying come on my chest through a screen, but would you like to be my boyfriend?” Harry can’t hold back the snort of laughter at Louis’ words, but he’s smiling. There had been a short period where he’d almost forgotten they  _ weren’t  _ already dating. With just shy of five months of knowing each other and four and a half of being friendly with one another, it seemed almost weird that they weren’t dating.

“To be honest I’ve been referring to you as my boyfriend already,” He says, shrugging with a guilty smile, “Oops.” Then it’s Louis’ turn to laugh, and even through the screen he can see the tiny little crinkles at the corner of his eyes, only brought out further by the light shade of grey beneath his eyes.

“Glad to know I’m not the only one, ‘cause I’ve been doing the same for a little while.”  _ I love you,  _ Harry’s brain says, but he doesn’t say it out loud. It’s not time, not yet. He’s not sure when it will be the right time to tell him or if the time will come soon at all, but he knows he can hold on to it for a while, knows he can keep it inside until it’s entirely ready to burst.

So, the semester continues.

Harry’s plants slowly start to die as winter crawls closer, but he brings as many of them inside as he can as the weeks go on, before his living room is just about as full of plants as it could possibly be. Then, he moves on to the guest room and smiles fondly as he remembers how well Louis had taken to the plants all around him and how much he’d seemed to enjoy Harry’s fascination with them.

But as the days go on, he finds himself happy with his routine.

His students tease him relentlessly when he gets a WhatsApp message bubble over the projector that shows Louis saying something slightly provocative. It was just a simple  _ had fun last night! :)  _ but that’s, clearly, all it takes to send college student’s minds into spirals about dirty thoughts.

He ends up letting his lecture end early with a silly grin on his face as his students file out of the classroom, and he packs his things up.

The hallway is almost completely empty by the time he emerges from his classroom, just a few random students sitting around and waiting for their next class or studying or just playing on their phones – so he pulls out his own phone and sends a message to Louis.

But as soon as he presses send, he hears a soft  _ pop _ that he recognizes as Louis’ text tone, and looks up immediately.

“Hi!” Louis says, smiling just a bit as Harry sees him standing in the hall. It takes him a moment to fully realize that Louis is actually here, that he’s not just seeing things. They hadn’t talked about him coming out, hadn’t even mentioned the idea of Louis making his way back out to the tiny little town that he seemed so distant from. Yet, with the other man standing right in front of him, Harry feels happier than he has in a while.

Sometimes he can’t help but wonder exactly what he did to deserve someone so incredible in his life, to deserve all of the positivity Louis radiates around him. The feeling of love surges high in his heart all over again, and his cheeks almost ache with the wide smile that spreads over his face.

“Hi, Lou. Fancy seeing you here,” He says with a dimpled grin, sitting down beside the man he’s officially started to consider his boyfriend.

“Mm, we finished a case in Florida. Figured I’d drop by and spend a couple days bothering you before I get whisked away by another bad guy.”

“How lucky for you, it just so happens that my Thursday lectures aren’t on this week, because of a quiz.”

“I might have maybe gotten a copy of your syllabus from Niall,” Louis says, a little grin on his face as he leans in almost close enough to touch, but still just enough distance that they aren’t. “Can I?”

“Home first.” Louis just smiles. He seems to understand, seems to always just know exactly what Harry needs whenever he needs it. Perhaps that’s the main reason his allure is so strong. Louis takes his gloves hand in his own and squeezes it once softly as a small smile spreads across his face.

“Home first,” He says, echoing.

Then they’re off.

The only way Harry can describe getting back to his house after so many weeks of not seeing Louis, is with a crash. Louis asks his permission one last time once they’re safe behind the closed door of his house before his hands are all over him – everywhere in the absolute best of ways.

Flashes of bright colors – pastels, neons, and soft hues that remind him of sunsets and nights on the town – spread over his vision as Louis’ lips brush against his neck. Louis’ faint shadow of a beard is rough against his skin, and his hands grab at his arse.

“The things I want to do to you,” Louis says as he presses him against the wall, hands gripping tightly at his hips. Harry closes his eyes for just a moment, and he can see it, can already feel the arousal burning heavy inside of Louis, fitting easily beside his own.

Focusing on Louis’ touch, he can see flashes of images, can see the way Louis is imagining his cock buried deep in Harry’s arse. It sends a hot wave of arousal down his spine as his cock twitches, already half hard in his pants.

“You can,” He says, his breath already shaky. “Take me to bed.” Louis doesn’t waste even a moment before he’s grabbing Harry’s hand and leading him down the hallway and opening his bedroom door.

He’s quick to strip himself of his clothes, and Louis doesn’t touch him again. Not yet.

“Lay down,” Louis says, pupils blown wide with his own arousal.

Harry’s breaths are labored as he lays, splayed out on the bed. Louis has this look on his face that he can’t quite read, lip trained between his teeth. His eyes are looking over his body, and it sends yet another wave of arousal, hot and wired, through his entire body.

It’s been so long since he’s done this, been so long since he trusted someone so intimately, been so long since he’s taken that final plunge with someone. He’s not afraid of it, not the way he thought he might be, but rather there’s an anxiety under his skin of how much he’s going to like it. He can already feel it inside of him, how quickly he’s going to get addicted to this, how hard it’s going to be to let go when the time comes.

“You’re sure?” Louis asks, worrying his own lip between his teeth. Harry nods, a smile on his face. He’s already asked once, but just the need to ask, the comfort in knowing Louis wants to ask that he’s alright with this - it makes him feel even better about all of it.

There’s something intoxicating about seeing Louis smile.  He wants to see it every day for as long as he possibly can and that’s something that scares him - or perhaps it should scare him - but it doesn’t.

Louis kisses him again and it sends a vibrant flash of yellow all across his vision, and the tingling feeling of Louis’ arousal buzzes through his entire body, from his fingers to his toes.

The feeling - it's indescribable.

Louis reaches to the bedside table and grabs the bottle of lube, first, then drizzles a good amount over his fingers. The cap closes with a click, and then Louis is kissing him and touching him and it’s incredible.

The first touch of Louis’ finger just barely circling his hole makes a shiver run through his body, as more flashes of colors bounce across his vision, just little waves of colorful haze over the darkness from his closed eyes. “Stop teasing me,” He says to Louis, pulling back just enough to see another sly grin on the other man’s face.

He’s happy, comfortable, at peace, even now. There’s no worry, no thoughts of anything except that moment and he loves it.

Louis’ finger inside of him sends waves of pleasure through his entire body with each nudge against his prostate, and yet every feeling of the deep hot arousal he can feel from Louis, it spreads through him like wildfire. His body feels warm with it. He’s leaking against his stomach already and his thighs twitch as he sucks in a shaky breath.

“Lou, so close already, please, please,” He begs, half detached from himself as he writhes beneath the touch.

“You’re just gagging for it aren’t you, love?” Louis asks, and normally Harry would be more than embarrassed to be this close already - but he’s not. The sensations burn hot, live wires beneath his skin, and it’s too much all while not being enough. He nods in response to Louis’ question, swallowing hard as he meets Louis’ intense gaze, just as he slips a second finger in beside the second. Harry cries out with the feeling of it, the sudden feeling of grinding up against something ghosting through his body as Louis grinds his still clothed cock against the mattress.

“Oh, my god,” He gasps, and Louis choses that moment to crook his finger right against his prostate, and he comes in thick ropes across his stomach. Louis pulls his fingers out, then, but Harry whines at the loss. “No, can go again. Want your cock.” He doesn’t think he’s ever been quite this whiny, quite this needy during sex, but he can’t help himself now, can’t help wanting to chase after the intense feeling of bliss.

“You sure, love?” He hums his response and Louis places another little kiss on his lips, just enough contact to send a beautiful flash of greens and yellows across his vision, and he smiles wide.

“Always sure.”

Louis trails touches down his chest, down his stomach, all the way to his thighs. Just the ghost of little touches, leaving something between a tickle and a shiver in their wake, before Louis is pushing Harry’s thighs up, feet flat on the bed as he scooches himself back.

Louis unzips his own pants, then, and kicks them off somewhere in the room, and it takes just that for Harry to really absorb that this is happening. That he’s finally found someone he trusts enough to share this with, that he’s finally found someone like Louis that he wants to do this with. He’s already seen Louis naked, but it feels more intimate, now, in a way. Seeing the smooth expanse of his tanned skin, slightly more tan where his clothes don’t cover from the unforgiving southern sun, Harry is once again reminded of how beautiful he is. He’s just left his underwear on before he’s pouring a fresh few drops of lube back over his fingers, circling the digits over the sensitive rim of his hole for a moment, before sinking two inside of him all at once.

He’s still sensitive from coming, but the sensation is still overwhelming. Focusing more on Louis’ feelings for a moment, he feels the burning arousal, feels every rampant emotion of worry, of trust, of happiness that is winding through Louis’ head. He can tell Louis is worried that something about his gift is going to ruin this for him, but he knows it won’t - knows he can trust Louis.

“Stop thinkin’ you’re gonna hurt me, ‘cause you’re not,” He says on an exhale, reaching to grab Louis’ free hand with his own, squeezing their bare hands together. Louis smiles again, finally, crinkles forming in the corners of his eyes, and Harry feels on fire once again.

A third finger slips inside him, then, and Harry can tell that Louis isn’t trying to get him off with it, can feel the beginnings of the impatience beneath his skin. He’s just making sure he’s open now, and the feeling is still incredible, but he’s equally as ready to have Louis inside of him as he thinks Louis is ready, too.

It isn’t long before his fingers are withdrawn and he’s wiping the lube on the duvet and sending a soft smile in Harry’s direction. He’s fully hard again, against his stomach where the come from before is slowly starting to dry, but it doesn’t even feel gross. With Louis, everything in this moment feels incredible, like he could explode with every sensation.

“Condoms?” Louis asks, pointing over at the bedside drawer. Harry doesn’t have any. He’d forgotten about that bit before he’d gotten Louis to come over.

“Are you clean?” He asks in lieu of a response, tilting his head to the side.

“I am, are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Suppose condoms don’t matter, then?”

“I trust you,” Harry says, and that seems to be the thing that brings both of them back to the present moment, that brings every feeling all around them back, crashing down in sudden waves. He hears the way Louis’ breath comes out just a little shaky - and the trust between them is so strong, built up like a wall that only the two of them have created.

Louis pours even more lube into his hand, then, the snick of the cap catching for a moment the only thing catching Harry’s attention enough to make him look away from the beautiful man above him. His heart is beating fast in his chest, the excitement mixing with the arousal as the two feelings swirl inside of him, and then Louis’ holding his hand again, doubling the feelings with an added sense of contentment.

Louis braces himself between Harry’s still-raised thighs, rubs the thumb of his free hand over the smooth skin of his knee cap, before he’s bringing it back down to his cock, guiding it to his hole and inching himself inside.

It’s always taken a moment for Harry to be able to come down from the high that the first feeling that this brings. That slowly being filled up all while feeling everything the other person feels, while seeing every flash of color behind eyes that are squeezed shut tight from the pleasure of it all. He sucks in a breath, mouth agape, as Louis’ hips meet his own, buried to the hilt inside of him. He’s still for a long moment, fingers brushing through the long strands of Harry’s hair to comfort him through the slightest feeling of a burn, before he’s moaning out an affirmation for Louis to move.

And then the feeling of overwhelming, all-encompassing bliss fills him all the way to his core.

Louis is kissing him again. Hot, shaky breaths from his nose puff out against his face as he starts with little, small thrusts, all building up to pulling all the way out, slamming back inside with a fever Harry feels all the same inside of himself. He can’t keep up with kissing Louis at that moment, can’t keep up with anything as he arches his back off the bed, grips at the sheets below him with his free hand and cries out. It’s too much - too much in the absolute best way he could ever possibly imagine. He almost feels bad, just for the briefest moment, before Louis is whispering something in his ear about being close, too, and he agrees.

He feels wound up in the best way, heat coiled tight in his stomach, both the sensation of his own pleasure washing over him in waves, mixed seamlessly with the underlying burn of Louis’. He’s moaning, the noises almost foreign to his own ears, and he can hear Louis’ gentle moans muddled with his exhales.

All it takes is Louis moving their joined hands above Harry’s head, holding him down in just the slightest way, before Harry’s coming again. Barely a moment later, with the feeling of Harry clenching around him, Louis follows, and Harry can’t help the stray tear that leaks from the corner of his eye, overwhelmed and fucked out in the absolute best of ways.  

He’s not entirely aware of what’s going on around him when Louis pulls out, but it’s not long before he feels the warmth of a wet flannel against his skin, cleaning him off between little kisses along his sweat-sticky skin.

“How are you feeling?” Louis asks as he climbs up onto the bed once again and leans back against the headboard. He has a bottle of water in his hand and little droplets drip down the side from the sudden temperature change.

“Good, yeah. That was… Pretty great.” This makes Louis bark out a too-loud laugh in the silence of the room, and he slaps a hand over his face as if to capture the noise. It makes Harry smile, a fondness swelling inside of him that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt.

“Thanks, my ego needed a stroking.” He hands him the bottle of water, then, and Harry takes a long drink of it before it gets set on its place on the nightstand.

“I’ll stroke anything of yours any time,” He says, wiggling his eyebrows with a goofy smile, and Louis laughs again.

“I think you’re sleep delirious. Go to bed you nut.”

“Yes sir,” He says with a laugh before he scoots down on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. Louis lays down too, but not before he places one final kiss against his lips so softly that every feeling of happiness Harry has ever experienced is surpassed.

“Good night,” Louis whispers again into the darkness, and Harry falls asleep with a smile on his face.

He wakes up with his face pressed into Louis’ neck, with little flashes of soft yellows floating behind his eyelids. He’s well rested, without any lingering tiredness sitting in his body, and he can’t help but smile as the feeling of  _ comfort  _ envelopes him all over again. Louis’ soft snores fill the room, and Harry just smiles as he closes his eyes and tries to focus a little harder on the colors in front of his eyes. It’s a process he’s familiar with, going from the colors to a full vision, even if he’s never used it on Louis before.

He wants to see what Louis is dreaming of.

Wants to see exactly what’s created the soft little smile on his face as his heart swells with his own happiness of being surrounded by the man he still loves more than he can explain.

The vision trickles in slowly, first with the sounds, then the feeling, then the visuals.

It starts with the sound of children’s laughter surrounding him, and the sound of little footsteps running on hardwood. The air is dry, and it’s cool inside of the house. As the visuals around him slowly trickle in, he sees the stark white of the walls, filled with picture frames of all different sizes, ages, colors, materials – all scattered along every surface that they can be. The kids in the dream look a lot like Louis – with the same noses and the same little crinkles at the sides of their eyes – and he realizes very fast that this is a dream about Louis’ home life. About his family and the things that he sees regularly.

“Three,” Louis’ voice says in the dream, and Harry is so, so fond, “Two, one!” He counts down, before he’s moving. The dream is through his own perspective, with a kind of vivid attention to detail that only comes from sincere familiarity with a place. Dream Louis turns around and starts searching through the house, and giggles from little girls fill the space once again. He can feel the happiness radiating off of Louis in a way that he’s always been so familiar with, and he loves every second of it.

He scoots himself away from Louis, then, not wanting to be too invasive – even if he knows that’s just a part of who he is, at this point. He looks up at his roof as the rickety creak of the ceiling fan continues, spinning at a medium pace, but he feels at peace.

There’s just something that leaves him feeling  _ right  _ when Louis is beside him, and the love blossoms bright in his chest all over again, leaves him at a loss for words with the intensity of the feeling all over again. There’s nothing that compares quite the same, that leaves him feeling exactly the way that Louis does, and it’s intoxicating.

It’s barely a few minutes before Louis is shifting and he’s waking up, opening his eyes just barely halfway before he sees Harry, and then he’s smiling again. “G’morning,” He says before he rolls his shoulders and scoots himself up so he’s resting against the back of the headboard.

“Morning. You sleep alright?”

“Always sleep good when I’m beside you, naturally,” Louis says and grins, a cheesy smile spreading across his face. Harry wants to kiss him. He always wants to kiss him. But, even he knows that he needs to brush his teeth and get ready for the day before they can really do much of anything.

“How long are you staying again?” Harry asks, rubbing his eyes.

“Just ‘til tomorrow morning, if that’s alright?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. Just wanted to see if you were going to stay long enough for it to be acceptable for us to have a lie in.”

“Is it ever  _ not  _ acceptable for us to have a lie in? That sounds better than anything else I can think up.” Harry takes that as all the invitation he needs before he’s leaning down and laying his head on Louis’ lap, still covered by the duvet over his hips. Then, he looks up at him, smiling, before blowing him a kiss.

“You really are something else, you know that?”

“Of course. If I was boring would I be able to hold your interest?”

“I think anything that’s  _ you  _ could hold my interest just fine.” Another dusting of a blush covers Harry’s cheeks at the compliment, and he’s happier than he even thought possible.

Just having Louis in his bed sends him into fits of thoughts of the two of them building a life together, into the idea of them having a future. Marriage, kids, nights in with just the two of them, family gatherings with both of their families combining into one. It’s all exactly what he wants, exactly what he’s always wanted, yet Louis is the first person who’s ever gotten him to be able to put a face to the fantasy.

He wants it all with Louis.

Every single bit of it.

\---

The morning air was sticky with humidity as the sun began its ascent above the treeline.

Seven in the morning had always come too early, and seven twenty eight even faster when he had to be out the front door of his own house, immediately following his mom handing him his lunch box with a kiss to his cheek.

Mornings were quiet, with just a few cars riding down the street on their way to work or school and the morning sun was soft. As much as he had hated waking up, the mornings had always been the best parts of the day, to Harry.

And as the months had gone on with Eden at his side, they’d only gotten better.

Even though the two of them didn’t share any classes, they still walked to and from class together every day, never missing a single day, and had their lunch at the same spot together in the cafeteria. Perhaps it had just been a feeling, in the beginning, that they would get along, but he’d never anticipated them to get along quite this well – for him to never want to stop spending time with the girl he considered his best friend.

Harry had his backpack hiked high on his shoulders as he walked to school, headphones from his Walkman in his ears, playing a Fleetwood Mac CD he’d gotten from his mom’s collection.

As he walked by Eden’s house, she came out and started walking beside him, taking out one of his earbuds and putting it into her own ear before taking his left hand into her right. It was a typical morning, and as the two of them spent more and more time together, Harry slowly got more comfortable around the girl. “Is this something your mom listens to? This is old!” Harry couldn’t help the little grin, laughing a bit. Their hands swung between them as they walked, backpacks heavy on their shoulders, but it was a good morning.

“It is my mom’s actually. I got it from her collection. Do you like it?”

“It’s interesting, I guess. Is it from the eighties?”

“Obviously. The best era.”

“Hm, I think some newer stuff is much better. Have you heard anything from the Red Hot Chili Peppers?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You should come over after school today and listen. I just got their newest album.”

“Okay,” He’d said with a grin. He knew her complaints were just to rib at him, to make him laugh, because she sang along to the words as they played through the earbuds, and even asked him to play track three twice on their walk. They’d always spent a majority of their time on their walks in silence other than the music that played between the two of them, just enjoying each other’s company until the day would end and they’d share everything that had happened throughout the previous night and day.

Perhaps it was just because they were too tired, or perhaps it was just because they’d wanted to enjoy each other’s company in mutual silence.

That had been something Harry never quite figured out, but he never took any mind to it, either.

“See you at lunch!” Eden called as they walked into the building and she turned into her first class. He stood back for a moment, made sure she got to her seat safely, and then made his way to his own class, still smiling. He’d always been happy when he was around Eden, always found himself wanting to go to school when he woke in the mornings. He’d found that having a real friend – not just a friend from association – made the day breeze by so much faster, made the time that he wasn’t alone go by fast enough that he almost dreaded the end of it.

The days were good.

\---

School finally goes on a break, and Harry had decided to give his last exam online just so he wouldn’t have anything to grade. The easiest way for a professor to be lazy, he thinks, as he finishes the last question on the exam and publishes it to the website. He reaches up, stretches his arms out, and feels all of the little pops and cracks throughout his body as he relaxes. He’s never particularly enjoyed sitting at a computer for hours on end, which was the main reason he typically assigned paper homework, but even the typical things for him have to come to an end at some point.

Throughout the previous years, a majority of his time was spent grading papers on breaks, but for once, he’s decided he wants to take some time for himself, wants to be able to have a week off without worrying about any of that. He closes the computer and crawls into bed with a smile on his face. By the following day, he’d be in the airport and he’d be seeing Louis.

Perhaps it’s a little reckless, for him to use up as much money as he did to buy a ticket last minute to see Louis, but he couldn’t help it. He’d known all along that there was just something that drew him to the other man like he’d never felt before. So getting into bed feels like a great way to end the day and begin the next.

As he walks through the airport terminal with his plane ticket in his hand and a full text conversation between himself and Louis on his phone, he can’t feel anything except the bright burning happiness inside of him.

He’d just barely hinted the possibility to Louis a few weeks previous, and of course the ticket had had to be bought very last second just because of the nature of Louis’ work, but with the dates finally solidified and the time they’re going to get to spend together set in stone, he’s more than happy.

_ Walking through security now! _ He sends, followed by about ten emojis, before he goes through the motions. He’s been on a plane less than a dozen times in his entire life, but even now, as he watches all of the chaos filtered by routine going on around him, he doesn’t feel anything except the burning excitement and joy of getting to see Louis again.

Can’t wait!! Dinner reservations are made and I’ll be there to pick you up :)

He smiles.

The flight is short – only two hours – and all Harry can think about throughout the entire thing is how excited he is to finally see Louis again. Perhaps it’s irrational, to miss him as much as he does, but he can’t help it, can’t help the way that he feels so strongly for the other man. There are times when he feels like this might be what a soulmate is – like this might be what it feels like to be reunited with the other half of himself he’s been missing out on all this time. It’s liberating – freeing from something he’d never been aware was holding him down. It’s another thing that he knows he’ll have to tuck deep away into the things he’ll never tell anyone else part of his mind, but as he thinks it, he settles down more comfortably into the window seat of the plane.

He leans his head against the window and looks out into the daylight around him.

The person beside him is typing at his computer keys diligently, like he’s working hard on something, and it feels nice to be left alone. He feels like he’s in his own little world, in a bubble that’s only his and Louis’ as he makes his way across the country just to be able to see him, to be able to touch him again.

Before he even really notice how much time has passed, the flight lands.

He didn’t bring anything except his carry on, so as he grabs that from beneath the seat in front of him, he’s ready to go, walking down the aisle as the line moves forwards. His heart beats a little faster in his chest as he walks out into the airport and feels the dry air all around him for one of the only other times he ever has in his entire life.

And, of course, right on the other side of the barrier is Louis, with a bundle of sunflowers and his name written sloppily on a little card in blue ink.

He swoons.

As he walks around the barrier, Louis takes him into a tight hug and everything feels perfect. He takes his sunflowers and smells them first, a smile over his face as a blush creeps onto his cheeks, and he places a small kiss right on to Louis’ cheek. It sends another wave of yellow flashing over his eyes, but it matches the sunflowers and it’s beautiful.

They eat their dinner together and it seems that the smile on Harry’s face is permanent, matched only by Louis’. There’s a petal from one of the sunflowers sitting in Louis’ hair, but Harry doesn’t tell him, doesn’t mention it, just because he thinks it’s cute – and beyond that, he doesn’t think much matters.

Not in their little world, at least.

Louis picked a small, local little Italian place for them to eat their dinner. Dim fairy lights line the walls filled otherwise with corks from wine bottles and different pictures of pastas and pictures of Italian culture.

“How’s work been, then?”

“Good, yeah. I’ve only been on two cases since I got home, but both of them ended about as nicely as you can expect a case involving serial killers to end.”

“Got them put away?”

“One, yeah. The other died. But at least they aren’t on the streets anymore,” Louis says, taking a drink of his water. They’d both decided not to drink for the day – just so they can enjoy the day together before opening a bottle of wine for the evening. It was a good decision. “How’s Zayn? Is he still lamenting the loss of Niall?”

“He had a massive crush on him, I think,” Harry says with a laugh. “But no, not really. No offense but most of the entire town is pleased you lot are gone. Means things can at least begin in the path of going back to normal.”

“I can understand that.”

They talk easily for the rest of their meal, and Louis even reaches over once and feeds him a bite of his dish. It spreads a hot, pink blush over Harry’s cheeks but he still smiles with the sentiment of it.

Ever since he’d told Louis that he likes being taken care of sometimes, that he likes feeling like someone else can do things for him every once and a while – Louis has been more than receptive of it. He’s more than lucky, really, that Louis is such an incredible person, so welcoming and open to everything that Harry wants.

“There’s a lot I want to show you. I hope you’re ready to be kept plenty busy over the next few days.”

“Honestly? As long as I’m with you I’m happy,” He says and watches as the smile crawls over Louis’ face with his words. It’s one of the more cliché and silly things he’s said since he arrived – those being his specialty things to say in general – but he loves how Louis always seems to react so pleasantly to them.

“Good, cause I was worried you’d get sick of me.”

“Don’t think I could if I tried.”

So they spend the entire day and most of the evening in the city.

Harry’s never been to Virginia, and he never thought he would, even if it is so close to his own state. Louis takes him to the obvious places first – to the monuments and past the White House, then off to some food trucks that he says he’d lay his life down for. But it’s where they end the night that Harry decides is his favorite.

It’s a grass covered hill with the view of a trillion stars all above the two of them, almost like they had been painted in position just for them. They lay side by side on the slightly dew damp grass with Louis’ hand interlocked with his own, despite it still being covered by his glove.

There’s something that brings a hint of magic to his life in the only way he thinks he could ever ask for, just being here, surrounded entirely by Louis. It’s the best feeling in the world and he never wants to let go of it, wants to hold on to the burning happiness that’s nestled itself deep inside of his ribcage and keep it locked up for himself forever.

“Tonight has been fantastic,” He says, turning his head to face Louis.

“Maybe one day I’ll convince you to move out here, to the city.” It’s something he thinks neither of them should say until they’re in a dedicated relationship, until they’re both in a situation that feels more permanent, yet the fleeting magic of the happy moment surrounding them makes him feel like he could move in at any moment without a second thought.

“Maybe one day I’ll convince you of that small town charm that you couldn’t see.” Louis smiles.

“Think I couldn’t see through the suffocating humidity and clouds of mosquitoes.”

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

“It might be a little easier to convince me if you were to kiss me again.”

“Just kiss?” He mimics from the night they’d gotten off over the phone together, and Louis grins.

“How about I take you home and show you want I want to do to do, this time.”

“Lead the way.”

They don’t have sex.

In fact, they don’t even talk about it, but rather they just sit down on Louis’ couch and continue talking about their lives, their days, and everything else that so much as comes to mind. It’s not something that Harry thought would happen, but he doesn’t mind it. A small part of him has always been at least slightly afraid of the intimacy – of the fear that he would over step some kind of unwritten boundary with no control over the situation.

He can only imagine how Louis would feel if he saw something that Louis didn’t want him to see, if he saw something that was none of his business to see. It’s one of the reasons he’s always struggled to date, and before long he’d given up on the idea entirely. Even in the most trusting of relationships, there are always things that someone doesn’t want known. Everyone has a right to privacy, to their own thoughts, to being able to think and see and know things that are just for themselves. Yet, Harry has never been able to offer anyone that.

There’s always been and always will be the possibility of never having that privacy ever again. It’s the one thing Harry knows he can never offer to anyone and there’s no way he could ever even ease the worry of it. Both for himself and for anyone else.

He doesn’t say anything about it.

Rather, they have a quiet rest of their night and Harry helps Louis make up a batch of cookies before they retreat to bed, with just a gentle, chaste kiss and a promise of tomorrow being a great day.

They see a film at a drive in movie theatre, which Harry has never experienced before, and he’s more than happy throughout the entire thing. Louis’ personal car has little touches that are clearly his own, marking it as something that is very uniquely  _ his  _ in ways that the company car he’d been in before didn’t have.  From the remnants of melted crayons on the dashboard that he’d blamed on his youngest siblings, to the chip bag that sits on the backseat, likely long-since forgotten, to the presets on the radio – it’s all so  _ Louis  _ that Harry can’t help but feel consumed by it.

The sky is bathed in oranges and pinks as they pull up into the lot and Louis turns his car off, and their third row spot gives them a perfect view of the massive screen displayed on the side of an old warehouse that’s been turned into the concession stand for the theatre. The movie starts just as the sky goes dark, and Louis’ grip is tight around his own hand, with his thumb tracing abstract patterns against the cloth of his glove.

It’s exactly the kind of night that he’d had in day dreams for most of his teenage years, with the too greasy food and the radio playing the audio to the movie just barely a millisecond out of sync with the way their lips are moving.

Yet, it’s still perfect.

“Can I kiss you?” Harry asks just about an hour in to the movie, and Louis smiles when he looks over at him.

“Do you really think you need to ask?”

“I mean of course – it’s important,” Louis rolls his eyes, but there’s a soft, fond smile on his lips.

“If I ever say you can’t kiss me, I’m delirious, delusional, and probably not of sane mind.” That brings a soft laugh out of Harry, before he’s scooting over, closer to Louis, and placing a gentle hand to intertwine with the other man’s. Then he places a gentle kiss against Louis’ lips, feeling the little flash of colors behind his eyes as he does, but he ignores them as best as he can. He wants to feel Louis - wants to have these moments with him that aren’t defined only by his visions, by his gift. He wants to have these little memories of him that aren’t clouded by anything else, by any other thoughts, by anything at all.

And that’s exactly what he gets.

Louis is overwhelming, all consuming, and perfect in every way that Harry could ever hope for another person to be. He easily creeps into every corner of his mind and takes over every part of his thoughts. His lips are soft against his own and the brush of gentle finger tips tracing gentle circles through the material of his shirt, right at his hips, sends his mind spiraling. Louis is everything he could ever want, but he’s always been selfish. He wants more – as much as he can possibly get, as much as Louis is willing to let him take. There are moments when he wants to let the fire inside of him take over and just take take take and not pay a thought to the possible outcomes of it all. Louis makes him careless in a way he’s never been, makes him want to throw out the part of his mind that considers the consequences of his actions. It’s a feeling he never wants to let go of.

“Have I mentioned how much I love doing that?” Louis asks with a little laugh when they’re apart, just a few inches away. Louis’ eyes are a brilliant blue even in the darkness with just the flashes of changing color on the screen illuminating them with an artificial glow.

“Hmm, maybe not. Doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing it, though,” He says in response, grinning.

“I,” Louis starts, kissing him again, just the lightest touch of their lips, “love,” another, “kissing,” Harry grins into it, “you,” he finishes. It’s a cheesy gesture, yet Harry doesn’t mind at all. He wants everything with Louis, including the cheesy moments and the silly romantic gestures.

Everything.

“I think you’re enabling the alcoholic inside of me,” Louis says later that night when they’re home and sharing another bottle of red wine. Harry just laughs a little, a smile spreading over his face.

“I can’t even deny that, if I’m honest. I do like wine.” He takes a sip from his own glass, a smile playing at his lips as he looks over to Louis. He knows that the other man is joking, knows that he doesn’t actually mind the amount of drinking he does, because he isn’t an alcoholic and he knows it’s not actually affecting his life – so it’s just in good fun.

“You have good tastes, too, so it’s definitely nice.” Louis’ cheeks always go a little rosey red at the tops when he drinks red wine, and the knuckles on his hands go just ever so slightly pink, too, and Harry thinks it’s probably the cutest thing he’s ever seen on another grown person. He wants to kiss the heat away from his skin, wants to see him rosey red with wine and sleep soft all the time, because there’s very little in the world, he thinks, that can top that.

“Bed?” Harry asks a little less than an hour later. It’s nearly midnight, with the stars high in the sky and the lights all around the town completely dark. One of Harry’s favorite things that comes with a small town is the lack of the light pollution. When he was a kid he used to lay on his roof and stare at the never ending universe all around him, trying his best to count them and pick up where he’d left off the night before.

It was all just a childhood novelty, but now, he thinks that the seemingly impossible task compares to how he feels now. Impossible to ever number or describe the love, the amount of fondness he has for Louis. There’s something deep inside of him that wants to try, in the same way he’d wanted to try when he was a boy.

Instead, he just leans his head against Louis’ shoulder and presses a soft whisper of a kiss against the skin on Louis’ neck. A promise, he thinks. The unspoken promise that there will be more nights, more time, enough of their own personal infinity for them to figure everything out. And maybe that’s all he needs.

“Bed,” Louis responds, standing up and taking Harry’s cloth-covered hand in his own before he leads him back to the bedroom.

Or maybe  _ this  _ is all he needs.

The mornings go easy.

It should be something Harry expects, just like every other time that he’s had the wonderful chance to wake up beside Louis, but it’s something he doubts he’ll ever get used to. The way things are so easy, so simple, so  _ good  _ when Louis is involved. He sleeps soundly, always waking up after Harry – which, is fair, he thinks, because he is on a teacher’s schedule after all – and his snores are always the first sound he hears in the mornings they spend together.

They’re soft enough that they aren’t disruptive, just the softest sound that Harry finds more endearing than anything else as he rolls over and watches the way he sleeps. He’s expressive, with the way his facial expressions change every few moments depending on what he’s dreaming of, and it makes another wave of happiness bloom, bright yellow and pink, inside of his chest.

He loves him, so, so much.

There’s so much love that he worries he can’t contain it sometimes, like it might all explode and fly away in a fleeting moment of him not being able to keep it all trapped tight and safe inside of himself. There’s just too much. It’s all consuming, yet still gradual enough in the way that it grows that he can recognize it in the things that he’d never thought he would associate with love. Louis is a first for him, even for some things he never thought  _ needed  _ firsts. The first person to make his heart ache, the first person to make him feel like he’s burning from the inside, the first person to make him feel like he’s  _ not  _ a freak for what he can do. There’s something special about what Louis is to him, even if he doesn’t know exactly what that might be.

“Mm, for someone who is supposed to know everything about the creepiest things about human behavior, you sure are a little weird sometimes,” Louis says, eyes still closed, but there’s a fond smile on his face.

“Me, weird? I’m going to need some incriminating evidence, Mr. Detective sir.”

“I’d like to present to the court that you like to stare at me every morning before I wake up.” A honk of laughter pushes past Harry’s lips at Louis’ words, and he’s grinning again.

“You’re just cute when you sleep. I can’t help it.”

“Creep.”

Harry doesn’t deny it. Louis kisses the grin off of his face.

\---

“Hello, Harry,” The doctor, Doctor Callahan, said as he walked into the small office. It was adorned with all kinds of papers that boasted degrees, all kinds of awards and plaques and other things that Harry didn’t care even in the slightest about, yet they were always there. Then, there were the little cards, drawn by little kids thanking him for his help, thanking him for  _ fixing  _ things, and Harry felt ill. It was the same routine he’d always followed when he walked into the too small, too hot little office that his mom had to drive him three hours away to get to.

“Hi, Doctor Callahan,” He responded just the same.

“How are the hallucinations? Is the medication working?” The doctor never wasted any time. They were paying him for thirty minute sessions, but he rarely took up even fifteen of them. It was just a short session where Harry would say  _ no, still not working  _ and they’d repeat themselves in a constant cycle of the same words spoken at different times.

Sometimes he increased the dosage. Sometimes he changed the medication completely. Other times, he’d just talk and print him out pages to work on at home about  _ coping with hallucinations. _

Every time, Harry just wanted to go home.

Every time, his mom said it would be for a good reason.

“There’s been some new research released about treatment for schizophrenia. With electric shock –“

“No,” Harry said, voice stern as he pushed his chair back a few inches. “Absolutely not. Nope. Next.”

“Harry, clearly just medication isn’t working for you –“

“I said no. Don’t bring it up again or I won’t come back.” The doctor just sighed, shook his head a bit and moved on.

Every time, without fail, Harry left the doctor’s office feeling worse than he had when he went in.

\---

Evening comes again, and they’re sat on the roof of Louis’ house. East coast sunrises are rarely a sight that leave him breathless, yet the silhouette of Louis against the soft orange of the sky makes his heart race and takes every shred of oxygen from his lungs. He’s sitting with his legs criss-crossed in front of him and his head tilted back to watch as the colors swirl around above them. It reminds him of dipping a paintbrush into a clean glass of water, as the color spreads and dilutes throughout the endless blue sky around them, tinting the barely-there wisps of clouds with the pastel hues.

“You’re beautiful,” Harry says, in place of  _ I love you.  _ Louis turns, the same way he always does, turning his entire body as if he wants the person he’s talking to to be fully aware that every bit of his attention is only on them. It’s something that took Harry a while to get used to, but once he had, he started realizing the same message behind it that he gives himself in other subtle ways.

Perhaps they haven’t told each other they love the other just yet, but perhaps they don’t need to, either.

Between the lines they’ve said it a million times already, and perhaps an infinite number more, and Harry no longer feels the constriction of keeping the words inside. He feels that they’ve been let out, released into the world to create something that is so uniquely meaningful between the two of them without the need to be said. And that, he thinks, is more powerful than any kind of phrase that he could ever give; more powerful than anything he could possibly  _ say,  _ because the way he loves Louis isn’t in words, it’s in his actions.

“Kiss me,” Louis says in response, and Harry doesn’t have to be told twice.

He crawls over towards Louis, the tiles of the roof leaving little indents in his hands as he goes, before he sits himself right beside his  _ boyfriend,  _ and kisses him. The colors that erupt behind his eyelids as they fall shut never fail to amaze him. Little streaks of golden yellow, lightning strikes of pure vivid white, bubbles of pinks – everything that makes up Louis shows in the colors of his soul – and Harry loves every bit of it.

They sit lazily on the roof together, touching in every way that they can out in the open, mouths moving together languidly, slow and gentle and with everything Harry’s ever wanted in a kiss. It doesn’t last long before they’re just laying back on the tiles of the roof, looking up at the stars above them.

It’s a clear night, but even with all of the light from the city Louis lives in, it’s still beautiful. The stars are dimmer than they would be if they were at Harry’s – but the thought that he doesn’t mind creeps in to his head for not the first time. He can almost see himself here with Louis, too.

But, he thinks, he could see himself anywhere as long as Louis was beside him.

In any universe, in any place, anywhere in the world, as long as Louis is beside him he thinks he could easily feel at home.

They crawl into bed hours after they should have. But when he’s here with Louis, the should haves and the need tos all seem to disappear, out of mind in a way he’s never experienced before. Louis’ presence is calming, brings him down from too far above himself where he tends to be at most times. Louis helps keep him grounded, helps remind him of what’s really important and what doesn’t matter.

He knows they can sleep in the following morning and that staying up means little in the grand scheme of things. So, with that on his mind, he’s happy crawling into Louis’ bed beside him as the clock reads half three in the morning.

They lay together in silence for a while, just a few inches of space between them, and it’s peaceful.

Louis’ snores start to float through the room before long and it makes Harry smile. There’s just something about all of this, about Louis, about his home, about how he lives, that leaves Harry wanting more. He wants more, and he can’t tell if it’s just because of Louis of because he’s started enjoying something about the city life that never caught his interest before.

All through his life he’d heard kids saying they’d leave Twin Lakes the second they turned eighteen.

Many of them kept their word and fled for college and never returned.

Even more were just like him and never left.

The same convenience store that he’d gone to when he was in high school is the same he goes to now; the same college he’d commuted an hour to every day when he was in school is where he teaches now; the same street he’d walked on every morning to get to high school is the same street he lives on, and something about all of it leaves the perfect sense of familiarity. Perhaps that’s the only thing keeping him there, holding him down, stopping him from moving on.

He stays awake even longer, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness around him.

It’s a thought for later. 

They sleep until noon the following day.

When he wakes up, eyes still sore from being tired, he sees that Louis is already sitting up in bed, his back against the headboard as he types away on his phone. His hair is still rumpled and sleep soft, and his eyes aren’t all the way open, like he’s just woken up, and Harry rolls over to look up at him with a fond smile on his face.

“Good morning,” He says, watching as Louis puts his phone down and looks at him. He’s beautiful in the mornings, in a different way than the way he’s beautiful the rest of the day. In the mornings he’s so raw, so purely and firstly himself that there’s nothing hiding exactly who he is.

“Good morning,” Louis mimics, the smile on his face reaching his eyes as they crinkle just softly at the corners. Harry sits up beside him and stretches his arms high above his head, trying to adjust to being awake, his body complaining the entire time from the sudden shift in his sleep patterns.

Yet, something about it feels great. Something about changing with Louis beside him makes him feel alive, makes him feel like there’s something worth changing for, and that’s exactly what he’s needed all along.

“Breakfast? I’ll go make us a fry up if you want.”

“That sounds great.” So, he climbs his way out of bed as Louis does, and watches as the other man makes his way out to the kitchen while he goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

He looks himself in the mirror for a moment, and the first thing he notices is how he doesn’t look tired.

Before he’d met – and become friendly with – Louis, it seemed that no matter what he did he was always tired. There was always just that underlying feeling of exhaustion and unfulfillment  that was just beneath his skin in a way he couldn’t reach. For a long while, he’d thought maybe the depression had come back, maybe he was slipping back into the mind set that he never wanted to see again.

And he knows, really, that it’s not possible for another person to cure his mental state. It’s something he’s known full and well his entire life, but perhaps the way Louis forced him a bit out of his shell, forced him to do things, to spend time with people who weren’t his students or his plants, and most of all, didn’t make him feel like a  _ freak –  _ that’s what changed things.

Louis had never made him feel like a freak. Not even before he believed in what he could do. He’d looked at him a bit strange, probably talked bad about him behind his back, but not once did he make him feel like a freak. That, he thinks, is what had drawn him in, had made him want to spend more time with him, had left him open to the apology that led them where they are now. All of it put together left him feeling better, refreshed and happy in a way he doesn’t think he’s felt in years – and it’s overwhelming.

He brushes his teeth and washes his face before he goes to the kitchen.

Louis is standing over the oven with two frying pans in front of him, cooking up four eggs in one and hashbrowns in the other. There’s a pot of coffee brewing behind them, the noise of the boiling water falling through the filter and the smell filling the room. The oil pops in the pan as Harry leans back against the island of the counter behind Louis. “Smells nice,” he says, palms at his sides, resting on the counters.

“My mom always used to make this for me and my siblings on the mornings we’d have lie ins. It’s probably my favorite like – stuff yourself silly meal, you know?” He’s smiling when he talks about it, and Harry can’t help but feel the twinge of fondness in his heart once again. He’s happy that Louis can talk about his mom now without sadness, that he can hold those memories dear instead of ostracizing them and labelling them as bad.

It makes him happy, that Louis knows how to shift his mind for the better.

“Sounds really good, thank you for cooking,” He makes his way over to the coffee pot and pulls out two mugs from the cabinet above it. “Want me to make you up a cup?”

“Yeah, sure, that would be nice.” He grabs the milk from the refrigerator and pours it into Louis’ cup, followed with one packet of sugar, and a splash of milk into his own cup, topping the rest off with coffee and setting the two mugs on the counter right beside Louis. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Yeah, you’re always the best to sleep beside.”

“Mm, I think you might have me beat there. I swear, even from a foot away you’re like a human furnace. Always warm.” Harry just laughs as he takes a sip of his coffee and glances out the window.

The view from Louis’ house isn’t much different from his own.

He lives in a smaller neighborhood, tucked just outside of the city limits. The road it sits on isn’t busy, doesn’t have the constant hum of traffic that Harry tends to think of when he thinks of the city, and it’s full of a kind of peace he never thought he would find anywhere but home.

His house is larger than Harry’s – with three bedrooms instead of his two – and he figures it’s just in case Louis’ family comes by.

They eat together as soon as the food is ready , sitting at the table right beside one another, sharing little stories about their dreams from the night precious mixed with just about anything else they can think of, and everything feels right.

“So, Haz, I’m sorry if I’m overstepping or anything –“ Louis says from where he’s sat on the other side of his couch. Harry’s dozing off already, eyes half lidded from the wine and the excitement of finally getting to see Louis again at all. “I just, how come you don’t let me touch you, just like, casually? I know you will see things and I understand that of course, but I just… I’m not doing anything wrong, right? Not… making you uncomfortable, pressuring you, anything like that?” That wakes Harry up almost right away, makes him just as alert as he had been before he started dozing off.

“No, no, god no, Louis. I love having you around me all the time and you definitely haven’t done anything wrong. I’m just – I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences when it comes to touching people and I’m just,” He sighs softly, strokes a hand through his slightly too-long hair, “I don’t know. It’s silly but I have a lot of insecurities about it.”

“About me?” He can see the flash of hurt that is quick to be gone from Louis’ face, but he saw it, and it leaves a stabbing pain in his own heart.

“No,” He says, sighing. “I don’t want to tell you a sob story. It’s just – irrelevant.”

“It’s not irrelevant to me, love. If you want to tell me I want to hear it.” Louis seems so honest, so certain that he wants to hear what Harry has to say about the shitty skeletons that have haunted him for years, but telling them feels like too much, feels like it’ll pull him under.

“I mean, well, I’ve only ever had one long term boyfriend, right? And we were together from my freshman year of university all the way through my masters thesis. So like, over six years. And one day he comes home and we’re about to have sex and he’s being really finicky with touching me, which was fine, I figured he just wasn’t fully in the mood but he wasn’t saying anything, so we you know, started. And well we figured out the loophole for my visions is a condom, but we didn’t always wear one… so he was fucking me without it and I could see that all he was thinking about was his girlfriend from work.” Louis looks at him with a pained expression that he doesn’t think could be matched unless it was from Louis – empathetic Louis that Harry has grown so, so fond of. Perfect, sweet Louis who Harry was so close to letting his insecurities take away from him. “Six years of my life wasted while he was fucking some blonde undergraduate intern.”

Silence stretches the distance between them just for a moment, and Harry blinks back a few tears in his eyes from the memory. His heart stings like it had just happened, and he can still feel the utter betrayal and sadness that he’d felt that day, that he’d felt as he had to tell Zachary to get out of his apartment, to leave him and never come back – and he’d had the nerve to act confused. Had the audacity to pretend that Harry was the one being irrational and crazy for kicking him out in the dead of the night.

“Harry, I know everyone says this, but you can absolutely trust me when I say I would never do that to you. My mom… she was cheated on, tossed out, left behind time and time again by deadbeat guys throughout my childhood. I’ve seen how much it hurts and I’ve seen what it really does to a person, and I can promise you that I’d never cheat on you like that. I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you, ever.”

A shaky exhale escapes past Harry’s lips at the reassurance, and he glances over to Louis, finally. Looking at him while he was telling all of his insecurities felt too personal, felt like it was too much. “I believe you.”

“And I’m never going to pressure you into letting me touch you, because that’s not a good thing to do. But I’ve always been a touchy person and sometimes I like to show how much I care about someone with just… gentle touches, you know? Holding hands, petting your hair, little things like that. They’re silly things, but they mean a lot to me.”

“I’d like it if you did that,” Harry finally says with a smile. “So far every time I’ve touched you I’ve seen nice things, pretty colours that make me feel calm and nice, so I think that’s what will keep happening.”

“Can we have a cuddle, then? You can lay your head in my lap? I know you were falling asleep just a minute ago.” Harry smiles and budges up on the couch, before he’s laying down and placing his head right in Louis’ lap. It’s a good feeling – being close without having to worry about the touch. The worry of having to see something he doesn’t want to see – because as Louis gets further inside of his head and his heart he’s beginning to realize that there isn’t a single thing he wouldn’t want to see.

The feeling of tiredness rests dormant in his bones.

He’s exhausted – both from the lack of sleep over the last two days – and because he finally feels at home in Louis’ presence. He loves being around him, loves being surrounded by the warmth and the radiant happiness that the other man gives off in every way he ever possibly could. There’s just something so incredibly intoxicating about so much as being around him, and being touched, held, and perhaps, one day, loved by him – well that’s just too much. It’s so much that he doesn’t think he could even begin to comprehend the thoughts of it.

Then he feels the gentle brush of Louis’ fingertips brushing across the smooth skin of his arm, and dull flashes of orange spike in lightning strikes across his vision. The touch is so gentle, just barely a brush of skin against his own and it sends a flurry of shivers down his spine, but it’s so comforting in a way he’s never experienced before.

“You always look so warm,” Harry says, and he knows it probably makes no sense to Louis, knows that his nonsense rambling about his visions rarely makes any sense to anyone but himself, but the way another streak of yellow and blue flashes across the blacks of his closed eyelids shows him the happiness that his words make Louis feel. “Pretty colours, makes me feel so nice.”

“I told you, I never want you to see anything bad when I touch you and I really don’t think you ever will.”

“I trust you,” He says, and sleep drifts closer. “Think about what makes you the happiest right now. If you want me to see.” There’s almost an instant change, the second the words leave his mouth – and that’s how Harry knows it’s genuine. There’s a warm, happy clench of his heart that spreads throughout his entire body as he sees himself in Louis’ mind. It’s fuzzy, distorted by his own exhaustion and the way the thoughts fleet from one scene to another, but he can hear his own voice, can see himself, can see his house and his flowers and his silly suits in his closet.

He loses his breath with the sight of it and opens his eyes to look up at the man above him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Thank you,” He says, and he’s not even sure what he’s thanking him for – why he’s saying something so cheesy and unnecessary – but it feels right. As he closes his eyes again and the flashes of colour blend seamlessly into the painted images of himself, and he falls asleep without a second thought. Without a single worry of the insecurity he’d started the night with, without any anxiety of what’s to come.

He can finally just be.

And it’s the most freeing thing he’s ever felt.

He wakes up in bed beside Louis, and for just a moment he’s disoriented. The light is coming in through the window on the opposite side than it usually does in his own bedroom back home, and it takes him all of about thirty seconds before he remembers where he’s at.

Remembering is one of the more pleasant feelings that he’s had in a long time.

And then he looks over and sees Louis still sleeping beside him, little puffs of breath passing his lips every few moments with long lashes spread out over his cheek bones. He doesn’t have a shirt on and it’s clear that he’d moved the blanket away from him at some point during the night, just enough to expose the top of his shoulders down to just above his nipples, but he looks so beautifully sleep soft that Harry never wants to stop looking.

There’s just something so captivating about Louis that he can’t even begin to explain, that he can’t even put into words in his own head. He’s never felt so entranced by another person before, and it’s a feeling he doesn’t ever want to let go of.

Louis stirs, just a bit, in his sleep. For a moment, Harry thinks he might be waking up – maybe from the feeling of a gaze on him even through sleep – but then he just turns on his side and Harry hears a slightly loud exhale, and he smiles. He looks up at the ceiling for a moment and takes a few seconds to just breathe deeply, to enjoy himself where he is in the present moment, in this life.

There haven’t been many times throughout his life that he’s really said he could enjoy his life and the things happening to him. But as he thinks about how gentle Louis must have been to carry him to bed the previous night without waking him or sending him in to a fit of visions in his sleep – he feels so, incredibly endeared.

The caring nature that’s embedded itself deep inside of Louis’ heart is contagious. Harry doesn’t think he could so much as think a mean thought while in Louis’ presence – doesn’t think it would be possible to feel something other than an overwhelming sense of kindness and happiness while with the other man.

With a soft sigh he gets out of the bed as quietly as he can and pads over to the bathroom. He looks a mess, having fallen asleep in his clothes from the day before with his hair tousled and curled in directions it never should. So he makes quick work to tame it as best as he can, then he brushes his teeth and changes his clothes. It’s not the most he could do to make himself presentable for Louis, but a part of him knows that Louis wouldn’t care. A part of him knows that he’s found the type of man that doesn’t expect him to be in perfect condition every moment of the day, and it’s freeing.

One his mouth is rid of the taste of overnight breath and he feels at least slightly cleaner than he felt when he’d first woken up, he gets back into bed.

He lays back for a while after crawling back into bed, checking through emails and texts on his phone, before he feels the bed shift and Louis is awake. “Good morning,” He says, voice gruff and sleep soft and Harry is smiling again.

“Good morning.”

“Have you been up long? Sorry, that’s so rude of me, to let you stay up without me. You should have woken me,” Louis says, and he really looks apologetic, like he’d managed to put Harry out.

“It wasn’t rude at all. You were up longer than I was last night and you’re the one who brought me to bed at all. Figured you might like to sleep in a little longer, anyway.”

“This is why you’re my favourite.”

Louis gets up and showers while Harry keeps going through emails – most from students who are floundering over an assignment he’d given over break – and tries his best to type up replies as quickly as he can. It’s a cycle he’s always gotten himself into – answering emails over break more often than taking the time to enjoy himself and have the time off, but this time has been different. He hasn’t even had the thought to check his phone or worry about work once while he’s been with Louis, and only now does he feel like he even needs to give it a thought, just because he’s not with him.

The shower shuts off before long, and Harry smiles as he sets his phone down and plugs it back into the charger where Louis had been thoughtful enough to leave it the night before. It’s a few moments before he comes out from the bathroom, just a towel wrapped around his waist, and Harry smiles. His skin is still damp and his hair drips fresh little droplets against the pale skin on his back and torso.

“Came out naked to give me a show?” Harry asks, winking in Louis’ direction with a smug smile on his face. Louis giggles, sways his hips in a little circle, and rolls his eyes before they’re both laughing.

“I want to try something, if you’re willing?” Harry says, softly, as the film plays on the T.V. in front of them.

“So I can feel things – like, from other people when they’re touching me. With you I have to focus a little harder to get to that point now, but anything you feel, I feel.”

“Right, I remember that. Yeah.” Louis is looking at him with the same soft smile that always makes Harry’s stomach do a little flip. He’s always so understanding, so patient, so caring even when Harry struggles to get the exact words out that he wants to say, that he wants Louis to hear.

“So I was thinking… if you maybe like, got yourself off and just – I held your hand?” Louis’ eyebrows shoot up, then, and his teeth scrape over his bottom lip.

“Would it have something to do with you wanting me to have that control over your own pleasure, still? Like before?”

“Yeah, something like that. I also just – it’s a lot more muted when I feel what other people feel you know? So like, I kind of like the feeling of being there but also being kind of close. I’m not totally sure if I’d be able to come from it? But I’ve also never tried.”

“You think you could come  _ completely  _ untouched?”

“I suppose it’s worth a shot,” He says, wiggling his eyebrows. “So? Would it be something you’d want to try?”

“Yeah, of course, absolutely.” He scoots himself over, just so their thighs are touching again – and kisses Louis. It’s chaste for a moment, just a gentle press of their lips together, before Louis’ hands snake up his sides, thumbs tracing over his nipples. “You wanna get naked for me love? Let me see you?” He whispers into his ear before his teeth scrape over Harry’s neck. It’s the unspoken question of  _ do you want me to dom you this time?  _ That sends a shiver through Harry’s body as the same warmth and adoration fills up warm in his heart.

“Yeah – let me just –“ Louis kisses him one more time before he stands and strips his clothes off, just a quick flurry of motion as the excitement builds in his stomach. He’d fantasized about something like this for years, and now that it’s finally happening, the desperation to find out if it’s as good as he’s built it up to be in his mind clouds every other thought.

He shucks his clothes off, tossing them to the side before he’s back beside Louis. He crawls into his lap first, straddles him in the way he’s always wanted to do, and kisses him. They’re both half hard already, with Harry exposed and out in the open that’s clear, but he can feel Louis’ hardness through his jeans, and that’s more than enough to get him going.

Louis puts a hand at the back of his neck, then, and applies just the lightest amount of pressure, but it makes Harry go almost completely pliant. He knows it’s Louis’ way of telling him he’s in charge, of telling him to  _ be good  _ without having to say it, and he’s quick to obey.

“Sit next to me, love. Wouldn’t want you getting too worked up when it’s not  _ really  _ you who we’re worried about, hm?”

So that’s the game they’re playing, then.

He just nods, dumbly, playing along with whatever scene Louis’ built up in his head. He’s always so gone for him, so ready to listen to anything he has to say, and this is no different. He moves to sit beside Louis, just barely an inch of space between the two of them and watches as the other man stands and strips himself of his own clothes, clearly taking his time as he folds each article up and places them on the floor neatly. Something about waiting has always been so hard for him – the arousal burning hot inside of him as he waits, knowing what’s coming – and he knows Louis knows that, too, knows that his patience certainly isn’t his strong suit. But it’s not long before their hands are clasped together, fingers interwoven tightly.

Harry takes a breath of anticipation.

Louis wraps a hand around himself, just the slightest edge of hesitation there, as if he’s waiting for Harry to stop him, but he doesn’t.

The sensation is just barely there at first, just like the ghosts of a fleeting touch, yet the bubbling heat of pleasure grows fast in his stomach. He gasps first, body twitching as he tries to figure out exactly what he’s supposed to be feeling, as electricity zaps through every nerve ending in his entire body. “Oh,” He says. It’s almost overwhelming, the more he focuses on the feeling. His mouth goes dry as flicks of heat sear through his entire body and he moans, voice broken with the feeling of it.  

He turns to look at Louis again, breaths already coming out in short bursts.

Louis’ got his lips parted, little puffs of air coming out in tight exhales as his fist works over his cock in quick strokes. Between exhales are soft moans, little high pitched noises that send another wave of warm arousal through his entire body.

Every part of his rational brain is telling him to touch himself, to give into the feeling and take over to be able to understand the feelings rolling through his body, but he doesn’t,  _ can’t,  _ because he wants nothing more than to be good for Louis, to please him, to see if he can do this for him. It doesn’t feel so much like someone is touching him – not really – just with the ghost feeling of  _ something  _ touching him, it creates the same on edge feeling he normally gets when he gets himself off, creates the same desperation to topple over the edge.

He’s almost certain he could come from this, yet it feels so far away, even if the burning inside of his stomach says he’s so close. Louis’ moans come more often then, as the pace of his hand picks up and Harry tilts his head back, eyes shut tightly. Yet he can still see it, can see from  _ Louis’  _ perspective the way he’s getting himself off, can see himself and how fucked out and desperate he looks even if he hasn’t been touched.

“Lou,  _ please,”  _ he begs, but he’s not begging to touch himself – he’s not even sure what he’s asking for, what he wants, but he feels all consumed by everything, by Louis’ touch, by the still-there images of himself, by the feeling of pure adoration that’s coming from Louis, buried and stifled but still so strong underneath the feeling of getting himself off.

“Be good for me Haz, I know you can do it, my good boy,” Louis moans out, thumbing over the head of his cock. Harry’s moans are desperate now, more like high pitched whines coming from the back of his throat as all he can do is grab at the material of the sofa as the heat takes over his entire body. “Close, baby, so close.”

He feels it before it hits him, the way everything in his body gets hot, tight, and then suddenly releases.

When he comes it nearly feels like it’s ripped out of him, and he moans, head thrown back as dark spots dance over his vision. It’s intense, his entire body locking up as he comes, and every muscle seems to relax all at once. He’s out of breath, toes twitching with the aftershocks of it, before he finally opens his eyes again.

“Oh, my god,” Louis says.

“Holy shit,” Harry says at the same time.

Then they both break out into a little fit of giggles before Louis is peppering his face with gentle kisses, and Harry feels so, perfectly at home.

“How was that possible?” Louis asks after a minute. Both of them are splayed out on the couch, still naked, and Harry’s almost certain there’s come in his hair, but he doesn’t mind.

“Honestly I didn’t think it was.”

“You just – holy shit.”

“I know. It was super intense, too,” He says, still a little in shock just the same.

“Do you think it’s something you would want to try again?”

“I think next time I might want to do it with like, a vibrating plug or something?”

“God, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Harry grins.

“Always.”

The next evening finds both of them in a park, laying on a blanket laid out in the grass beneath them. It’s their last evening together, and Harry finds himself just ignoring the sadness. It’s there, lurking in the back of his mind, but it’s not the most prominent thing on his mind.

Instead, Louis is beside him and their fingers are intertwined once again, and something about that feels like a presence he can carry with him no matter where he is. No matter if Louis is beside him or halfway across the world, he thinks that this is the kind of embrace, the kind of love, the kind of affection that he needs to be able to feel connected to him no matter where they are.

“Hey Lou?” He turns to ask, a soft smile on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for all of this, like, just, everything.” Louis doesn’t say anything, instead he just cuddles a little closer. It speaks louder than a response could have.

  
  


“Hey, don’t look so sad. I hate it when you look sad,” Louis says, their hands still held tightly together. His heart is aching from the loss already, from knowing that this is the last time he’s going to be seeing Louis for who-knows how long, and it  _ hurts.  _ All of the same excitement that he’d had on his way to the airport has shifted, come back full force with the same intensity his happiness had been, except with longing.

It doesn’t even make sense – he realizes – because their hands are still together as they walk through the airport corridor, yet he already finds himself feeling like he misses Louis. He thinks it might be something like preparing himself for the sadness that will come when he finally gets home, but he doesn’t want to feel it, doesn’t want to deal with it.

“I’m just going to miss you, is all,” He finally says, a sigh finishing his sentence.

“I’m going to miss you too, but I’m planning on coming out to see you again as soon as I get a chance. So hopefully you won’t have to miss me for too long.” Louis always knows exactly what to say to help cheer him up, and it lifts a bit of the burden from his heart with every word. It’s a promise – and even if it had already been there, floating unspoken between the two of them, hearing it said out loud makes things hurt so much less.

They walk together in silence for a while, but it’s not uncomfortable.

Harry’s flight leaves in two hours, but he’d paid for the annual membership to bypass the security line the day he turned eighteen, just in case he had to travel. Minimizing the risk of someone touching him had always been important.

So he knows he has plenty of time before he has to go, but hours, days, even years wouldn’t feel like enough time left to have with Louis. But that’s a thought he can’t have now – that’s a thought he knows needs to be saved until he’s home in the safety of his own thoughts and he can digest these things properly.

The hours go by, and even if Louis hadn’t been in a rush to get rid of him, Harry knows he has to go and Louis does, too.

They hug again, the same familiar tight embrace that Harry has learned to love more than anything from Louis wrapping around him, and it’s comforting. Even if he’s going home, he feels more at home wrapped in Louis’ arms than any other place could ever feel. He sighs, content.

“See you soon,” he says.

“See you,” Louis mimics, waving as he watches Harry go. Harry can feel his eyes on his back as he goes, and he only looks back twice. The first time, Louis waves, a sad smile on his face. The second, he doesn’t wave, but instead the smile is just replaced with a frown. He understands.

Harry gets home to an empty house, and nothing feels right.

He knows he’ll never move to the city, knows that his home is here and there’s nothing that could ever change that, and yet his heart longs for Louis. There’s nothing he can do except wait until they can cross paths again, but the anticipation of it leaves his heart beating fast in his chest. There’s never been another person that has made him feel this way. There’s never been another person who has left him with a constant state of butterflies in his stomach and happiness in his heart. Louis does everything he’s ever wanted another person to do for him – makes him feel everything he could ever expect another person to make him feel.

When he sees something that excites him, he wants to tell Louis.

When he does something he thinks is interesting, he wants to tell Louis.

It’s the kind of feeling of love erupting in his chest that leaves him feeling hollow when they aren’t together. Love doesn’t scare him. He’s always been quick to fall and fast to have feelings, so it doesn’t surprise him when he takes the moment to realize he truly is in love with Louis. It’s not just a thought or a realization anymore, it’s the physical manifestation of the feeling - of the full body takeover that love really is.

The beginning growths of loving Louis have been deep inside of him since their first date, and it wasn’t long before the roots started to spread, taking place deep in his heart. Now, being officially together, makes him feel boyish in a way he never wants to let go of. He can remember back to high school when he’d gotten his first boyfriend – how happy he’d felt, how on top of the world and untouchable everything had felt in that moment. It’s almost a perfect comparison to what he feels now, to the excitement and happiness that grows inside of his stomach.

He walks down the hall and to his room, opens his bedroom door and feels the wave of cold air wash over him from the fan he’d left on. The bed is made with new sheets and a clean duvet as he’s always done before he leaves home, always having loved the feeling of having a fresh bed to come back to when he gets home.

He jumps down onto the bed, landing on his back and staring up at the ceiling with a soft sigh. He misses Louis and he’s almost certain that feeling won’t subside until they’re at each other’s side once again, but he thinks the longing will do him good. It has to, in one way or another. There has to be some good that will come out of missing someone that he can’t have every moment that he wants him.

He falls asleep, still in the clothes that he’d worn on the plane, and dreams of the same color blue that fills Louis’ eyes.

\---

“So, you’re going to Winter Formal with me, right?” Eden had asked over lunch the first day of the second semester of freshman year of high school. Harry just smiled, a little laugh coming from his mouth as she bit into an apple and just looked at him, big eyes always so unreadable.

“What?”

“You don’t have a date, I don’t have a date, our moms are going to want pictures and I don’t want my family to think I’m a loser.”

“I mean, I hate to break it to you but…” He said, laughing again as she threw a French fry at his head. “Yeah, of course I’m going with you, you nut. Who else would I be going with?”

“Hm, I don’t know. It seemed like you and Garrett Delane were really starting to get along.” Harry slapped a hand over his mouth to hold back another honk of laughter as he glanced over to the table three rows over, where high school football star, and senior, Garrett Delane was sitting.

“Oh, when did you get that assumption? When he was shoving me into the trashcan in A-Wing? Or when he dumped mashed potatoes into my bookbag?”

“Well, we all know that the trashcan in A-Wing  _ is  _ the cleanest. So, it seemed gentlemanly, is all.” He rolls his eyes as the bell rings and they both take their trays to the trash can. “I’m wearing a blue dress, by the way, so if you can, can you get a blue tie?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Cool. See you later, H!” She’d said before tossing her bag over her shoulders and making her way to class.

\---

  
  


The seventh murder strikes exactly four months to the day after the last.

Harry doesn’t quite understand the phone call he gets from Louis at first – like the words just don’t seem to match up as they’re strung together in a mess of something that should be coherent. But instead, he just falls silent, like he can’t process the words.

_ There’s been another body found, Harry. He’s still out there. _

And that – that makes his throat go dry, makes his stomach seize in knots, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“You’re coming back?” He asks, and his voice is broken.

“Yes.”

For the first time, perhaps ever, Harry doesn’t want Louis to come back.

It’s a mixture of thoughts and emotions that don’t entirely make sense inside of his mind, that don’t seem to come together in the coherent way he wanted them to, yet he can’t help it. He doesn’t want Louis to be here because he knows that Louis being here again can only mean that something truly awful is happening all over again, yet the selfish part of his mind that had been sad the first time he’d left wants him back more than anything.

“We have to find this guy, Lou. We have to,” He says after a long stretch of silence between them.

“We’re going to. I just - I can just feel it this time. I  _ know _ we’re going to find him this time.” Harry bites his lip, but he believes him. He trusts Louis with everything in him, and he forces himself to trust what he’s saying. Forces himself to trust that everything will come to the best end that it can come to.

Whatever that might be.

He flicks on the news and sees that the local station has managed to get ahold of the case yet again, and he can’t help but groan. The public panic is only going to make everything worse and he knows that this case is already hard enough for everyone – but it twists the knife in the already there hole in his chest.

“The Clockwork killer has struck again!” He broadcaster says into her microphone as the wind whips her hair back and forth. “Yet another girl in her early teens was found dead in the same park where six others were found four months ago. Is this the same killer, or a copycat killer? More tonight at ten.” He sighs softly. The news stations won’t know if it’s a copycat before they do, but he can’t help the anger that wells up inside of him at just the  _ thought  _ of the media outlets thinking they know better about the case than the rest of them do, than those of them that have dedicated their lives to the cause.

He shuts the T.V. off and forces himself to go to bed.

Louis’ team arrives at eight twenty three in the morning, and the atmosphere is wound tight, like it’s going to snap. Liam walks into the station first, and he’s got bags around his eyes that are deeper than Harry’s ever seen on anyone – but he thinks he understands.

This case had drained all of them, had left them all feeling empty in a way a case never had before this. Then the reprieve had come and things started looking up, like they were getting better, but perhaps he should have guessed that things would get worse before they truly got better. Perhaps they’d all just set themselves up for failure when they’d surrendered themselves to hope. To the hopes that things would get better, to the hope that it would all end, to the hope that they had in their hearts that evil wasn’t real, that it would go away without any coaxing. There are times when Harry doesn’t mind being proven wrong, but then there are the times like this where being proven wrong leaves a hole in his chest that he’s not even certain anymore that he can fill, and everything just aches.

“Is everyone ready, then?” Louis asks, voice tired. He gives a soft smile in Harry’s direction, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s tired, too, and that makes Harry’s heart hurt all over again, in a different way.

A few mumbles of agreement flow throughout the room, but Harry just walks to the breakroom. He can’t find it in himself to sit through the meeting, can’t find it in himself to have to hear more about the deaths that are wreaking havoc through the peaceful town he calls home. There had been a time in his life when  _ he  _ was the strangest thing that any of them had ever experienced. There had been a time when everyone in the city felt safe, felt comfortable, knew each other in ways that only a small town could really accomplish. Yet now, there’s a kind of fear that has spread across everyone – made people leave, made them watch their kids more closely, made them afraid to send them off out of sight.

These were the things he never thought that he would have to deal with, living in a small town. These were the things he’d so strongly wanted to avoid when he made his decision to stay here, to stick around when so many of the people he grew up with fled at the first chance. He liked the safety, liked the knowledge that, at the end of the day, everything was going to be just fine.

But that didn’t seem like something he could count on anymore.

It didn’t seem like something any of them could count on, and that made him feel ill.

He makes a pot of coffee and leans back against the counter, lays his head back against the cabinets that line the wall, and closes his eyes. The feeling that’s brewing inside of his stomach isn’t pleasant – something that feels so similar to nausea, yet he still can’t pinpoint it.

He doesn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” Louis says, making Harry open his eyes to look at him. “Are you alright?”

“This sucks,” He responds easily. It’s an obvious truth, something they both know just as well as every other person that’s inside of the station, but he almost feels slightly better about it all just by saying it out loud. It almost feels like a weight is lifted from his shoulders just with sharing the burden, sharing exactly how much this is hurting him, with Louis. “Can I have a hug?”

“Of course.” He goes in and wraps his arms tightly around Louis, feeling the way the tightness of the embrace is returned, and for the slightest, most brief second, it feels like everything might be alright. It might be, eventually, when they’ve rebuilt and found out exactly how to repair themselves and everything around them from this disaster.

One day.

“Do you still want me to come and help?”

“If you’re willing to, yeah. I think you know just as much about this case as I do, maybe even more. So, I’d really appreciate the help.” He nods. Louis pours both of them cups of coffee into tall, white paper cups before they make their way back to the small meeting room where everyone sits, waiting for them.

The feeling that surrounds all of them is still somber, sad and empty in a way that he’d never thought was possible in a place that’s so typically sad just in itself. A silence has wrapped itself tight around each of their throats, wound so tight that they can’t speak, that the air seems to be ripped from everyone’s lungs.

He takes his seat.

“So,” Louis finally says after a moment, clearing his throat. “Harry is going to present the details this time.” Louis looks over to him and gives a gentle smile, but it still doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s a light lacking there that he misses seeing, and the dread clenches tighter inside of his stomach all over again.

“He’s fixated on the clocks, on the algorithm and the setup of them,” Harry says to the team of people already sitting around him. Louis had invited him in, had made him feel like a part of the team in a way he never thought he would want to be. He hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t want to work the field, that that kind of work didn’t please him in the way that academic work did, but he was slowly finding himself a place in the team around him. Slowly, he was finding that, perhaps, he was most comfortable here. “The first six, the first half were done as a set, with the way Jay Smith’s body was positioned so differently from the others, we think that the two milestones on the clock - six and twelve - will have some kind of significance to him. Six was the first, now we just have to make sure he doesn’t get to twelve.”

“You said you think twelve is some kind of - of doomsday, so to speak. So, what if all of the eleven that he’s planning out before all of this are just supposed to be practice, some kind of ritual leading up to that final kill that he’s really after?”

“I don’t think he’d be sophisticated enough to wait this long, to have this much patience to go on with a plan like that.”

“We profiled him as organized, I feel like a part of his organization really is just following his plan perfectly.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“None of this makes sense. Not a single bit of it,” Louis says, sighing, frustrated.  

“It never does,” Harry consoles, running a gloved hand over his thigh. The frustration is filling the room to the brim, putting all of them on edge, but he thinks that’s when they’re able to be the most productive. That’s when they can get what they need to do done - when they’re so hyper focused that it’s impossible to stray from the task at hand.

Not everyone is completely on board with the idea that their killer is building up to something, to a kind of metaphorical end that can only truly mean something in his deranged mindset; but, it’s become something that feels like how they are going to win this. It slowly takes shape and begins to feel like something that will give them the advantage, in the end.

Even if, as they stand at the park with their eighth victim laying at their feet, nothing feels like an advantage anymore.

Four days had passed between the seventh and eighth murder as typical, and yet so much had happened that it felt like it had been so much longer. They’d restarted. Looked back over autopsy reports, revisited the dump sites, done everything that they had done the first time with a kind of vigor that hadn’t existed.

There’s a special kind of motivation that can only come from feeling defeated, and with that, all of them had done everything they could in their power. Yet, nothing seems to be enough.

Never enough, in a case like this.

Everything Harry teaches, everything that typical criminal behaviors say to expect is different in this case, and perhaps that’s what brings them all the most pain. Their killer  _ should  _ have escalated by now. Their killer  _ should  _ have done something stupid that would have led them to him by now, yet, he hadn’t.

For the first time, Harry believes in a Perfect Crime.

“So, before all of this, we pitched the idea that maybe this will all stop at 12,” Zayn starts, looking over at Harry. They’re all sat in the meeting room and everyone feels defeated. Hours have stretched into days and days into weeks with this case, yet nothing has come of it. The only idea that has stayed with them since the beginning is the exact idea that the killer must have planted within them, with the watches.

The idea of a doomsday. It’s a weird thought, that it could be that that this killer has been after the entire time. Like he was just trying to make a  _ point.  _

“Like some kind of weird metaphorical doomsday, right,” Liam says then, and for the first time he looks like he’s on board with the idea, too.

“I think we should give a little more consideration to that. That - maybe him stopping at twelve could be a good thing.”

“If he really is just working up towards an ultimate end goal, then we have to put that to our profile and figure out what that might be. Revenge? Love? Is this a stalking type case?”

“I really think it has to be some kind of revenge, right? There wouldn’t be any reason for him to be so aggressive if there wasn’t some kind of anger there,” Liam says, chewing on the end of his pen. It makes perfect sense. But the figuring out what the aggression is  _ from  _ has been what has been holding all of them back.

They stay there for hours, writing up possibilities on the whiteboard in front of them until the room falls completely silent. Their ideas have run out. There’s nothing left to do, yet giving up feels like a crime in itself. There’s nothing any of them can do anymore, yet it feels like they haven’t done enough. Too many questions left unanswered, too many bodies left dead without cause, too many lives ruined without explanation.

He sighs.

The air is thick with an energy Harry has never felt from Louis before.

It’s almost startling, at first, when the two of them fall into their places in Harry’s home and it stays completely silent between them, with nothing but the sounds of their footsteps against floorboards even showing signs of life. It’s clear Louis’ had a bad day and it’s even more clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it, so Harry isn’t going to push.

Instead, he makes up both of them cups of peach tea and brings the still-warm kettle to the coffee table.

“Thank you,” Louis says softly, his voice defeated, and it makes Harry’s heartache in a way he never thought it could. It aches for everything that Louis is feeling, for everything the town is experiencing, for the frustration that’s running deep in all of them about this case. It’s just – it’s too much. It’s overwhelming in a way Harry’s never experienced and never thought the rest of the town would ever have to experience.

“How are you feeling?” Both of them know the answer. It’s clear it isn’t good, but perhaps its good to ask anyway.

“Like shit. I hate this.” Harry frowns. It was the exact answer he was expecting, yet it still doesn’t hurt any less than he thought it would to hear it. They all hate the case, it’s been taking a toll on all of them in a way that a case never had before, but that doesn’t excuse it. Doesn’t excuse the pain and the anguish that anyone with a heart would feel watching children die without a way to stop it.

“You said it yourself, we’re going to catch this guy. No questions about it, right?”

“Right,” Louis says, running his hands through his hair with yet another frustrated sigh. “I need to do something, to get my mind off of this. If I don’t, I think this case really just – it might destroy me, H. I can’t let that happen.”

“So, let’s do something.”

“Come take a bath with me?” Harry just grins and takes Louis hand in his own, then leads him back to the bathroom.

The bathroom has always been one of Harry’s favorite parts of his entire house.

The garden, of course, is his favorite on the outside, especially in the summer when it’s in full bloom and there are fruits and flowers and little animals that come and visit him – but full time, the bathroom has always been his favorite place to escape.

A large, standalone bathtub sits under a large window with a view of the three acres of land that sit behind the house, with a modern light fixture that dangles right above it. It’s mostly white, just like the rest of the house, with his own little yellow accents that touch on almost every surface. Three yellow candles sit atop the window sill, used regularly from all of the times that he’s taken baths there, with an array of yellow and white fake flowers sitting everywhere else throughout the room.

The lighting is dim on purpose, to create an ambient mood that Harry has always loved, and from the window, now, there’s a view of thousands and thousands of stars in the clear, cloud free sky.

He lights the candles before he runs the water, adjusting the temperature to warm, steaming when it touches his hand, but still comfortable enough for the two of them to sit in it without burning. Even if Louis’ been in the room dozens of times already, even used the shower every morning up until then, Harry doesn’t think he’s ever used it in the night time, when it’s exactly like this, the way Harry had intended for it to be used.

So, the way he looks around with his eyes wide and lips just so slightly parted, yet the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, Harry feels his heart skip a beat.

“Everything you touch is just beautiful, isn’t it?”

“I try.” Louis wraps himself around Harry tightly, a hug that feels like more than just a hug, almost like a grounding presence, a way to just remind both of them that they’re here, they’re safe, they can have this moment to themselves, and that’s exactly what they’ve needed all along.

Louis’ words still bounce around in his head, rubbing along each side of his skull and making his heart ache.  _ This case might destroy me.  _ It’s something he never thought he’d hear Louis say – never thought that Louis  _ would  _ say, and something about watching who he considers to be the strongest man he’s ever met crumble under all of the pressure makes him ache.

“I think this just, it hurts so bad because I have siblings, you know? And what if this was happening to them? I can’t imagine how I’d be feeling if this happened to one of them. Some of my sisters fall right in this age range, and the parents think I don’t understand how much it must hurt, but after my mom died – I raised them. I raised them and took care of them and loved them the same way a parent would and I just – I can’t imagine losing them. I think that’s why this hurts so terribly.” Harry is stunned into silence as he listens to Louis speak, as he listens to the moment of vulnerability without prompt, and he doesn’t know what to say.

The words aren’t laced with panic, they aren’t laced with sadness, but rather he’s just stating a fact, cold and calm in a way Harry doesn’t know how to process. Almost like he’s given himself up to it, like he’s surrendered himself to the fact that he could lose the rest of his family at any moment.

There’s nothing to say to comfort him, because it’s entirely valid.

Everything about the fear, about the worry of losing those that mean the very most to him is entirely valid, and Harry doesn’t know what to say to reassure him. If it can happen in a small town where, until now, the worst thing to happen was a drunk driver killing a family in the nineties – it can happen anywhere. And that’s a thought he doesn’t want to have, and it’s a thought that he’s almost certain Louis is already having.

“Let’s not talk about the case for a little while. Let’s just – try and get it off our minds a little.”

“Okay. Tell me something nice.”

“One of my Tuesday and Thursday students has started bringing her baby to lecture. She was struggling to hold her in one hand while taking notes, so I offered to hold the baby a couple weeks ago, and now it’s become a regular thing. So, I get to hold a baby for sixty five minutes twice a week and it’s probably the best part of my school day on those days.”

“You like babies?”

“God, I love babies. I’ve always wanted kids.”

“Do you know how many?”

“At least three, I think. Do you want any?”

“Mhm, I think it might be the fact that I was raised in a big household, but I want at least three, too. I love kids.” Harry smiles. He can see the two of them adopting a child together, making a life and making a home with no hesitance between the two of them. It would be easy, to start here, in this home. It would be easy to bring a baby here and let it grow into the space right alongside the two of them.

Perhaps it’s just a dream, and it might just stay a dream, but it sparks a new spiral of thoughts and brings a wide smile to his face. The water fills up fast, and he pours in a generous amount of his usual cream into the water, watching as it turns colors easily, before he throws in a bathbomb right alongside it. The colour spreads throughout the entirety of the water, and Louis watches with a smile on his face, before they both climb in.

The water swishes around as they settle into place, and Harry sighs, content, as the warm water surrounds them.

“Do you remember when you said you might want to top?” Louis asks after a few moments of silence around them.

“Yeah, of course. Why?”

“I think I’d like that. Tonight. Here, like this,” Louis says, and it takes him just ever so slightly by surprise.

Harry has his back against the cool porcelain of the tub, with Louis between his legs with his back pressed against his torso. The water is a light, almost opaque pink color with about a dozen rose petals floating around them, and the smell of roses is surrounding them, yet still not overpowering. It’s quiet between them, just the soft sounds of their breathing, but it’s peaceful.

“You’re sure?” Harry asks, threading his fingers through Louis’ damp hair. A part of him is worried that Louis is just feeling vulnerable, is feeling something that he doesn’t know how to explain and just needs something, that maybe he isn’t in the best frame of mind to be making these decisions; but another part of him knows that Louis is strong enough to be able to make these kinds of calls without letting other things cloud his judgement. He’d trust Louis with everything in him and he hopes that Louis feels the same.

“I’m sure. I’m – yeah, I’m definitely sure,” he says, his forehead still against Harry’s shoulder. “Just – be gentle, yeah? It’s been a long time since I’ve bottomed.”

“How long?”

“College, I think.”

“Jesus. You’re really sure you want to do this tonight?” Louis lifts his head up, then, a smile on his face.

“You worry too much. I’m very sure and I’ll tell you if I need to stop or take a break or anything, alright?” Louis’ voice is soft, just barely above a whisper, yet it still echoes off of the walls around them. It almost seems that if they speak too loudly that something in the atmosphere will shatter, that something will change, that their calm moment with just the two of them together will shatter and be ruined once again. Even if the rational knowledge is that they’re alone, safely together with no one around to bother them, the moment of peace almost feels like it could be broken at any moment and that it should be cherished for as long as it can last, before the chaos returns.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Louis says, finished with a soft kiss against his lips, and that’s more than enough reassurance for him.

“Just – budge up a bit there, yeah,” Harry says softly, watching as Louis gets on his knees on the other side of the tub, his front draped over the end with his arse sticking up. Louis’ arse is something Harry knows he could admire for  _ hours,  _ could look at and touch for as long as he wanted and still likely never get his fill of it. But as Louis settles against the edge of the bathtub, open and vulnerable in a way Harry hopes he’ll only ever be with him ever again, he feels the same twinge of love deep in his heart all over again.

He spreads Louis’ cheeks and presses his thumb lightly against Louis’ puckered hole, watches as it flutters against the touch, and Louis’ leg moves a bit, making the water whoosh with the movement.

He rubs against the rim with one finger and listens as Louis lets out a soft exhale and relaxes into the touch, his head leaning down against the edge of the tub. It’s the kind of trust in Harry that makes his heart ache with it, that makes him smile a private little grin even if he knows Louis can’t see him, can’t see the way he’s so, so fond of the other man.

He knows it’s a weird time and a weird way to think about it, but even buried in these moments of pure intimacy he sees the little signs of love, of trust, of the bond that the two of them have between each other, and it makes it better than it could ever be. It’s something that Harry’s always craved in sex, in a relationship, in anything with another person. Trust, caring and the bond between them that can go unspoken, yet still have the strength it needs. And with Louis, he has all of that and even more, he thinks. It’s everything he could ever want.

“You’re so pretty. Every part of you is pretty.”

“Shut up,” Louis says, but it’s teasing, and he can see the corner of his mouth turned up into a smile, and Harry’s matches. He brings a second finger with the first, just teasing both against Louis’ rim, pressing gently – not enough to press inside, just enough for him to be able to feel it, just enough for Louis to twitch with the touch, for him to get hard from it.

The last thing Harry wants to do is hurt him, and after so many years of going without bottoming, he knows he has to take his time, has to do everything he needs to do to prep him properly if he’s going to avoid it. Louis is moaning against the touch before long, and that’s all it takes for Harry to reach across the tub to the sunk beside it and grab the small tub of lavender scented lube. With his fingers slick with it, the slide is easier, and he presses just the tips of his two fingers still presses together inside of Louis, watching as he opens easily to take his fingers.

He watches with a kind of rapt attention he didn’t think he could give – but something about watching Louis look so vulnerable, watching him in the way he trusts so easily and so openly, it captures his heart fully.

Louis is hard already, with both of his hands gripping the edge of the tub to keep himself up, and he looks beautiful.

“Stop teasin’ me,” Louis says on exhale after a while, making a little laugh come from Harry. “Just want to feel you inside of me.” And that – that’s more than enough for Harry to want to move on with it. He takes his fingers out and places another gentle kiss on Louis’ shoulder, before he grips his hips and guides him back helps him move back so his thighs are positioned with one on each side of Harry. There’s just enough room for the two of them just like that, and Harry runs his fingers through Louis soft hair one more time, a final chaste kiss against his lips.

“You ready, love?” He asks, and Louis looks up at him with a grin on his face that challenges the brightness of the sun, and nods his head.

He hadn’t taken any notice of his own cock, hard and leaking against his stomach, until that moment. He’d been so hyper focused on Louis that he hadn’t even thought of it, but once it comes to mind it suddenly becomes the only thing he can think of, the only thing he wants is to get off. But he pours a generous amount of lube on his palm as Louis settles with his front against Harry’s chest once again and lubes up his own cock, still slick beneath the water, and watches as Louis sinks down.

Louis goes down completely with a soft gasp coming from his lips as he bottoms out. He watches him, lips parted, with his hands squeezing hard at Louis’ hips, and he truly looks like a vision in a way Harry’s never seen. He’s beautiful on top of him like that, with his head thrown ever so slightly back, lips parted and eyes squeezed shut tightly.

He’s still for a while, heavy breaths between them, but before long he’s lifting himself, thighs shaking as he does, and it rips a moan from both of them all at once.

Harry doesn’t know what to focus on, doesn’t know how to handle the feeling of both Louis’ feelings mixed tightly with his own. There’s a light pain from Louis’ end, just a barely there burn, but it fizzles warm under Harry’s skin, tucked tight beneath the soft pulse of pleasure that comes along with it and his own. He has to close his eyes just for a moment, just to make sense of all of the feelings inside his head before he gets overwhelmed, before he gets lost in them. “Kiss me,” Louis says, voice still so quiet, yet the demand doesn’t go unheard. He stays still for a while while they just kiss lazily, with Harry’s hands running up and down the smooth expanse of skin along his hips, his back, before he teases just a bit at his nipples. It draws a soft moan out of Louis, and that’s enough of a confirmation for Harry. As long as he isn’t hurting him, as long as he isn’t doing any harm, he’s more than happy.

Reds and oranges and purples flash against his vision, just barely there clouds floating over his eyes as he focuses on the physical feelings of it instead, focuses on feeling everything it is that Louis is feeling instead of seeing the things he’s seeing. It’s just a moment of effort, but as soon as he does, it hits him fast and hard and he gasps with the feeling of it.

“Fuck,” Louis says softly, voice a little louder than it has been before, but still quiet. His voice is a little higher pitched than normal, too, and Harry takes a moment to run his hands over his hips and kiss him gently, letting him take his time.

“Are you okay?” He asks, voice gentle.

“Yeah, I’m good, I’m good, I promise, I just. Need a second.” Harry understands, doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t want to make Louis think he’s rushing him. Louis doesn’t go very fast as he takes his time to adjust, and Harry doesn’t move him, just lets him do what he needs to do on his own, lets him get used to the feeling on his own.

Once Louis sets a rhythm, any remnants of the pain that he’d been feeling from Louis disappeared with ease. Once he adjusted to the feeling of it, he seemed to take back into the feeling of it as if there hadn’t been the years-long gap between the last time he’d done it. It’s new – everything is so new with the feeling of being inside of Louis all while feeling everything Louis is feeling – it’s something he’s never experienced quite like this, and it’s overwhelming.

Without the slight barrier of the condom between them,  he feels everything and he feels it like a fire against every inch of his skin. Just skin on skin with the added amplification of feeling everything. All he can do is grip weakly at Louis’ hips, hands moving with the rhythm that Louis has set as he watches in awe.

“Oh, god,” Louis says after a moment, followed by a moan.

From there, he moves rapidly, moving himself up and down over Harry’s cock with ease.

When his thighs start shaking Harry grips his hips a little harder and lifts him easily, moves him himself and watches as Louis sags into it. It’s incredible, watching the way he still moves his shaking thighs around him yet still lets Harry take charge. The move together like that easily for a while, with their moans and harsh panting breaths surrounding them, filling the room everywhere.

Louis comes without warning, clenching tight around Harry as he tumbles over the edge, too. It takes him completely by surprise as the feeling takes over, makes him cry out with the overwhelming sensation of all of it.

They stay like that, together, for what feels like an eternity. Neither of them speak, but nothing needs to be said, either. It’s quiet other than the labored breathes from both of them, but it’s relaxed, safe, and most importantly, just for them. It’s just the two of them and there aren’t any demons chasing them for the time being. It’s just them, by themselves, with nothing else in the world as a priority.

And that, that makes everything more than worth it.

The following day ticks on slower than Harry thinks he’s ever experienced.

Frustration and anger runs rampant throughout the entire station, and none of it feels like something any of them should have to deal with, like something any of them would  _ want  _ to deal with. It’s awful. But something about having Louis there to make sure that he can stay grounded, stay afloat, keep feeling like the world is already over even though it feels like that more often than not, anymore.

“You ready to go home?”

“Niall and I were actually going to go out for some drinks. But I’ll be back later, yeah?” Harry can’t help but feel the slight twinge of sadness at not being invited, at feeling like maybe he’s a little too possessive of Louis, but he just smiles anyway. There’s no title that says Louis is his, and the jealousy is irrational, anyway.

“Alright, yeah. Want me to stay up for you?”

“Nah, I think we’ll be out late. Niall’s got Irish blood in him and he can hold his alcohol really well.” This makes a real smile spread across Harry’s face, just at the thought of the man he cares most for in the world having a pleasant night out in a time when it feels like there’s no way for anything to feel pleasant at all.

“Alright. See you later, then.”

Harry’s eyes shoot open at half past one in the morning when his phone starts ringing. There are only three people that he has on his exceptions list for his  _ do not disturb  _ so he’s quick to roll over and answer it, clearing his throat once in hopes to sound a little less like he just woke up.

“Hello?” He asks, forcing his eyes to stay open.

“Hi, is this Harry?” A voice comes through the other end. He furrows his eyebrows, unsure how someone who wouldn’t know who he was got through the silent mode on his phone.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Right, yeah, someone named Louis is here, can’t remember the address for the cab he needs. Said I should call you.”

“Oh, shit,” He says with a sigh, “Right. What’s the name of the place?”

“Blondies.” Harry sighs softly and sits up in bed. He recognizes the name immediately, and already knows where it is, but he still just sighs softly.

“Thanks, I’ll be there in twenty,” He says before he hangs the phone up and slips out of bed. He’d fallen asleep that night with his pajamas still on, because Louis had said that he’d be back and would crawl in bed with him, so he doesn’t bother changing. He doesn’t bother doing much of anything, other than grabbing two water bottles from the counter and heading out to his car.

He’s more exhausted than he has been in a long while, but for some strange reason, he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind doing this for Louis because he cares for him in a way he doesn’t care for many other people. So, as he starts the car up and blows the cold air conditioner on full blast against his face to keep himself away, he doesn’t feel anything but worry. There’s no anger against Louis, nothing except hoping he’s okay.

The drive is short, just a few minutes on a normal day, but Harry goes slow because he’s tired. One in the morning is a time that he thinks should have a name of it’s own. Peaceful and serene in a way any other hour could never possibly be, with the empty streets spanning miles and the streetlights the only signs of life throughout the small town.

Blondies is the only bar in Twin Lakes that’s open past ten in the evening, after having taken over the smaller bar that had been owned by a man that’s family went back six generations in the town. When he’d died and had no one to leave his property to, it had sat vacant for nearly three years before it came back in full force. The once-known biker bar turned into the town’s only all-inclusive modern bar.

It’s been years since he’s been out to a bar as it closed, and it’s been even longer since he’s been awake in the too-early hours of the morning like this, so his body doesn’t know what to do. He yawns three times on the drive, but when he pulls up he gets a sudden rush of memories of the last time he’d been here, when Zayn had had to do the exact same thing for him, saving him from a drunken night on the street at two in the morning.

The sign on the front has  _ Blondies!  _ In bright pink neon lighting, with the background of the sign made up of dozens of small pink and blue triangles. It had gotten more controversy than support in the first year it had been put out, with the owners being an openly gay couple and opening a bar that supported the other gays in the town, but after it became established, it became a hit.

Harry always called it the only progressive thing the entire small town had ever done.

He gets out of the car with a soft sigh, locking the doors before he walks a few feet to the entrance.

“He yours?” A tall, burly man with wild red hair and a long, red beard to match asks as he points towards Louis. Louis is sitting at the bar, half slumped over himself as he talks to the woman at the bar, who seems to be trying to force him to drink a glass of water. It’s still completely full, though, so Harry assumes he isn’t being very cooperative.

“Yeah, thanks.” The staff is already mopping and sweeping around Louis, and he’s the last person left in the bar, so a soft wave of embarrassment floats through Harry. “Hey, Lou, come on, let’s go home.”

“Harrrrryyyy!” Louis says, the word slurred even though he’s drawn it out. Normally, it would be fond, but this time it just sends a wave of concern through him. He stands from the barstool that he’d more or less been just draped over, and he stumbles right into him as soon as he gets up, barely able to support himself when he does.

Louis is drunk. Completely staggering and muttering nonsense kind of drunk that takes Harry completely by surprise. He’s never seen Louis like this and it’s not the way he really wants to see him, but he still takes his hand and leads him back to the car with another gentle hand on the small of his back. He stumbles the entire way, and Harry, more or less, has to support some of his weight the entire time, but they get back to the car and he straps Louis in before long.

“My savior,” Louis says once they’re back on the road back towards Harry’s house, with his head pressed against the glass of the passenger side door. He’s bent at an awkward angle in a way that Harry has a feeling will hurt in the morning, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even know if Louis would be able to understand fully in the state he’s in. He hasn’t seen someone this drunk since his undergraduate years of college and he’d almost completely forgotten how to deal with it. “You’re so good to me, y’know that? Like, you’re just, so good. To everyone. Like a good presence in the world that is never good.”

So, Louis rambles when he’s drunk.

Harry just smiles a little but doesn’t respond, lets Louis keep rambling on about how good and nice he is, about how good of a boyfriend he is, about how they can do anything together, and it actually makes his heart feel just a little more fond. Now that he knows Louis is safe, now that he knows he can keep him in his watch and makes sure he doesn’t hurt himself or that no one else hurts him, he doesn’t feel the worry.

“Alright, here we are,” He smiles as he opens the garage and pulls his car inside. Once the door closes behind them they’re engulfed completely in the darkness, and it’s quiet for a moment. Harry just takes a short, deep breath before pressing the button that turns the light on, and lets reality take back over.

Louis’ eyes are half lidded and it looks like he’s going to fall asleep at any moment, so he doesn’t say anything else, just gets out of the car and makes his way around to the other side. Louis is still sitting completely still when he opens his door, all he does is lift his head up so it doesn’t fall when the door opens, and lets Harry move him when he undoes his seatbelt and helps him get inside.

It turns out, that when Louis is this drunk, he’s a lot like taking care of a toddler.

He keeps stumbling, holds on to Harry tightly and keeps going on and on about how much he appreciates Harry and how much he’s glad that it was  _ him  _ that he found, but he doesn’t know how to feel about it. Doesn’t know how to take what Louis is saying just because he’s drunk. There’s a fine line between saying something while drunk because you mean it, and saying something because you just don’t know what you’re saying, and he has a bad feeling that Louis has passed the line to the latter.

But they both still crawl into bed together, and Louis wastes no time in laying with his front flush against Harry’s back, his arms wrapped tightly around him, and falls asleep almost immediately. It’s almost cute, in a way, how his snores fill the space around them so soft and sleepy. But it leaves an ache in Harry’s heart that he doesn’t know how to remedy. He wants to help Louis, wants to help everyone that’s affected this badly by a case that no one seems to be able to crack, yet there’s nothing that he or anyone else can do that isn’t already being done. Other than solving the case, there’s nothing else to do, and that’s more painful than anything else could ever be.

He doesn’t take long to fall asleep after that.

Two more days pass and Harry finds himself leaned over the toilet, throwing up once again. His phone had been in his hand when he was brushing his teeth, but it now lies on the floor, face down, and he doesn’t even want to look and see if it cracked when it fell.

They got the call at just half past seven that morning, alerting them that yet another body had been found, and Harry doesn’t know how to deal with it. His mind is reeling, the guilt is full force inside of his stomach, and everything just feels wrong on levels he’s never felt in his entire life. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with the evil that’s surrounding him that he doesn’t know how to stop. If there was a way he could make everything just stop, if there was a way he could change everything to be good, to be right in the world, he would. If there was a way he could find the man and tell him that he would trade his own life in return for everything else to stop, he  _ would. _

There’s nothing worse than seeing innocent people die, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

It’s clear that it’s affecting Louis, too, but he doesn’t vocalize it. When Zayn had called, he’d said there was no rush for anyone to get to the site, that there was no reason for them to rush when they all knew exactly what they were going to find. It was sickening to know that it would be the same puzzle that they’d yet to solve, with the same ritual with the same answers staring them right in the face, yet they couldn’t answer them.

They sit together at Harry’s dining room table, two cups of coffee between them with no desire for breakfast, and it’s silent.

Normally the house is quiet.

It’s typical that the volume is kept low and there’s no commotion, nothing except the serene atmosphere that he’s worked so hard to create, but this is different. Between them, there’s pure silence, without even an audible breath or clank of classes against the table. It’s artificial, and it feels wrong. It  _ is  _ wrong, because this isn’t them. This isn’t how they behave. This isn’t how they interact with one another, and nothing about any of this is right.

Wordlessly, the two of them head out to Louis’ car. Harry gets in the passenger’s side and Louis drives. There’s still silence. Louis doesn’t say anything about how he’s feeling, about the case, about his night, about  _ anything _ even once they’re in the car and on the way to the site. His lack of words speaks a louder volume than anything he could have said, and it leaves a deeper pit inside of Harry’s stomach.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Harry! Harry!” A reporter yells as he makes his way back to his car. He feels sick, feels like the world is crashing in one him and he doesn’t know how to handle it. Even if he hadn’t touched the girl this time, he still can’t help the wave of nausea that runs through him even just at the thought that another life has been lost, taken too early, ripped away from the world before it was her time.

He takes a deep breath as he keeps walking forward and ducks beneath the yellow string of police tape that’s meant to keep the reporters away. There are seven of them at the edge, with about one hundred yards between them and his car, and he just wants to yell at them to leave him alone, to let him breathe, to give him space when he needs it most, but he can’t. So, he stays quiet and just walks with his head down.

“Is it true you found another body?”

“Are there any leads on the killer?”

“Why haven’t you found the killer after eight kills!” That’s the question that sends him over the edge, makes his blood boil hot beneath his skin.

“No comment,” he says, and leaves it at that. Reporters are vicious, the kinds of people who won’t stop at anything to get their story, even if that means breaking hearts and stepping on them afterwards. It makes him remember very quickly why he hates field work so much, why he can’t handle dealing with the public who doesn’t understand the way they do. Because, he realizes, if  _ they  _ don’t understand, it wouldn’t be anything but stupid to expect the public to understand.

They keep shouting questions at him even when he’s beyond the safety of his car, with the windows rolled up and the dark tint creating something of a barrier between them, but he can still hear it, can still feel the panic seeping deep beneath his skin. He can’t breathe, and its sudden the way he inhales but it still feels like he can’t take a full breath, can’t get enough air into his lungs.

But the door opens beside him, on the drivers side, and he feels Louis’ assuring touch through the cloth on his back. “Take a deep breath, Haz, in and out, really slow, you’re alright.” He hadn’t even realized that Louis had been following him when he made his way to the car, or if he even had been at all, but having him there already makes him feel like maybe things might be alright after all, and he knows that Louis will help him believe it, too.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, a single tear falling down his face. “I can’t handle it. It’s too much, it’s wrecking my town and scaring all of the people and it’s breaking my heart.” His voice breaks as he talks, but Louis doesn’t say anything. His touch doesn’t shy away and he keeps rubbing soothing circles along his back as Harry cries, snot dripping down his nose. He knows he looks awful, knows that all of this is the kind of over dramatic reaction that he shouldn’t be having, but his mind is reeling with it. He can’t handle it anymore and as awful as he feels about abandoning everyone he’s worked with for so long, he can’t stay any longer.

He doesn’t want the team to fall apart, but he can’t stick around and let himself fall apart, either.

It takes a while before he calms down, and when he finally does he feels the cool air of the air conditioning blowing against his face. Louis must have turned the car on, he realizes, but they’re still parked in place and he’s still as close to the other man as the small confines of the car allow, and he’s grateful.

“Feeling a little better?” Louis asks after a moment and he nods.

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I just.”

“It’s alright. It happens to everyone on the field at least once. It’s a lot to handle and it really is overwhelming.”

“I think – I really think I meant it when I said I don’t want to do this anymore, though. At least for a little while. I need a break, even if it’s just a short break.”

“No one expects you to be here. You’re here completely willingly and you’ve been a massive help but if you think it’s best for  _ you  _ if you take a break for a while, that’s fine. We’ll be just fine.” Harry sniffles again.

“Can I have a kiss?” A small smile spreads over Louis’ face and he nods before he leans in and places a soft, chaste kiss against Harry’s lips. It makes him feel the rest of the way better, and he finally thinks he can take a full, deep breath. But barely a moment later, Louis is starting the car up and they’re driving away from the scene, the only sound between them the soft hum of the engine. He doesn’t ask where they’re going and Louis doesn’t tell him, and that’s just fine. He trusts him enough that he doesn’t even worry about it for a moment, but instead he leans his head against the glass of the window and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t sleep, just rests his eyes and lets his mind retrace all of the steps he’d made throughout the day. Perhaps he’d set himself up for a breakdown, perhaps he’d walked right into a stressful situation when he was already stressed beyond his limits, but he’d gotten through it, and that’s all that matters.

There had been times in his life when he didn’t expect to make it through these kinds of things, where he wouldn’t have even bat an eye if he’d had a full meltdown and woken up somewhere he didn’t remember going. Years had passed since then, but the ghost of those memories still follow him everywhere, even if he wants to forget them. Sometimes he has to remember that things could be – and have been – much worse for him, and things don’t’ feel as overwhelming.

Even if nothing like this has ever happened, if nothing quite this bad has ever wrapped itself around his neck and taken his breath away this much, he knows it could be worse.

So he exhales, and he’s grateful.

He stays home the following morning, sipping his coffee and eating a slice of dry toast the same way he would before work, but he stays in his sleep clothes a while longer.

“You alright?” Louis had asked as he made himself a cup of coffee early in the morning before he was out the door, off to finish doing the things that he needed to do to finish the case. He’d said yes, of course, but he didn’t feel alright.

He felt like he was wasting space, wasting oxygen, wasting his life away and letting others die, too. It wasn’t rational, not a single part of it was rational and the emotional part of his brain is telling him one thing while the logical side says another, and that’s the most overwhelming part of it all. Even if he knows none of this is directly his fault, even if he knows fully well that there’s nothing he, personally, alone, could be doing to stop this from happening.

Yet, it still aches deep in his chest in a way he doesn’t think he’s felt before. It’s a kind of loss of control that he has felt before, that he’s familiar with, but nothing like this. Nothing that’s ever hurt exactly the same as this. It takes him nearly until ten in the morning to figure his mind out, and by the time he does, he’s running late for class.

 

When he walks into the lecture hall five minutes late, all of his students are already there. He mumbles out a quick apology as he gets his microphone attached to his shirt and starts his power point up, but before he can even begin, there are already three hands raised in the air.

“Yes?” He asks to the first student. Julia, he thinks her name is. She doesn’t have a notebook or a laptop out to take notes, and he’s always hated when students show up like that, as if just listening is enough to take all of the information in to remember it properly. But that’s what gives way, first, to the fact that she isn’t going to ask a question that has anything to do with that day’s lecture, or with anything to do about their material at all.

“Is it true you’re investigating the Clockwork murders? Alongside the FBI?” Her interest seems genuine, but it just makes the stabbing pain inside of Harry’s head hurt worse. He’s taught time and time again not to perpetuate nicknames for killers, not to listen to the media, not to romanticize the evil that comes with serial killing, yet it didn’t seem to stick into her head. The same headache that’s been following him throughout the day comes back to the forefront of his attention and he lets out a soft sigh.

“Yes.” That’s all he gives in return. He hopes it’s enough to let them all know he doesn’t want to elaborate on it, because really, that’s the very last thing he wants to spend his valuable lecture time doing. “Now, today we’re moving on to field studies –“

“Can you tell us anything about the case?” A student from farther in the back yells out, stopping Harry mid-sentence. Annoyance seeps further under his skin, but he doesn’t want to show it. His students really aren’t at fault – even if it’s a bit rude to ask questions about something that isn’t on topic.

“I can’t talk about the case. Anything that’s been released to the media is over exaggerated for the story, and any details that are important to the case will be released… When? This was on your last exam.”

“Within a month after the case is solved,” A few people murmur out, and they sound disappointed. But the kid who’d yelled out his question is adamant, and doesn’t let Harry move on even when he gets his laser pointer focused back on the screen. All he wants is to go on with his lecture, but his students seem to have another idea, and that’s not something he enjoys.

The floodgates open all at once and suddenly question after question is being shouted at him, and he just leans back against the desk at the front of the room until there’s silence around them. It takes at least five minutes, and his frustration only grows the longer it takes.

“Anything that wasn’t covered in class today will be exaggerated on the next exam. I suggest you all re-read the chapter in your textbooks. Lecture slides will not be posted today. The rest of class is cancelled,” He says as soon as there’s silence and he feels like he can finally almost breathe. It’s too much. The media had put his face out into the world and told them all that he has a place in the case, that he has a say, that he knows something about it that the rest of the world doesn’t, and it left him vulnerable. Subjected him to things like this, to people who don’t know when their curiosity is appropriate and when it’s just annoying.

So, he has to avoid talking about it completely, only now he knows it’s going to be even harder than it’s ever been.

More grumbles come from the students around the room as bodies start shuffling out the door, but a few don’t leave. At least a dozen still remain in their seats for far too long after Harry dismissed them, so he decides to take the back way out of the classroom. The room at the bottom of the long, lecture hall staircase, that leads through the lab hallway.

It’s different from the way he usually takes, but it keeps him away from questions he doesn’t want to hear, from answers he doesn’t want to give, and from faces he really, in this moment, doesn’t want to see.

The guilt reignites itself inside of his stomach, gnaws away at his organs and claws its way up his throat, but he’s always been good at ignoring it. So that’s exactly what he does.

Harry invites everyone in their circle of investigation to his house for dinner.

It’s not something he’s done very often throughout his life, but he feels that doing so can be an important way for him to deliver news that he otherwise doesn’t really want to. So, as he finishes his cooking and the first knock sounds against the door, he smiles and quickly walks over to answer.

It’s Zayn, accompanied by Liam, and they both walk in and take their shoes off at the door. He teases for a moment about how quickly their friendship had built, but there’s something nice about seeing his friend meet someone else that he hits it off so well with.

Louis comes out from the shower before long and places a little, soft kiss on his cheek and it sends another wave of happiness through him. There’s something about the feeling of having all of the people he knows from this part of his life gathered in one area, about having everyone gathered for something  _ good  _ when everything has felt so bad for so long that he can’t help but fall in love with.

Eventually, everyone else slowly shows up.

It doesn’t take long before they’re all sat at the table around Harry’s roast, eating and talking and drinking and everything feels great. He doesn’t want the night to end even as everyone already has their dishes in the sink and their drinks finished and he knows it has to.

Everyone leaves before long, saying they have an early morning, and then it’s just him and Louis alone in the house once again. It’s a normal occurrence, but something about the night just feels easier, feels better in a way. He thinks something about his anxiety about leaving the team and all of them hating him has been dwelled, maybe.

So, he sits Louis down on the couch.

“I really just wanted to like say I think I was pretty serious about like, not continuing with the case. I know it really kind of sucks because I’ve been around this long, but now I just – I really don’t think I can handle it,” he says, unsure how he feels as he does. It’s a strange feeling that wells up deep in his stomach, like he can’t quite identify it but like he still knows it’s something akin to shame.

“It’s just like I said before, love. No one is expecting you to help us. You were there completely because you wanted to be and it’s fine for you to not want to be anymore. Honestly, even  _ I  _ don’t really want to do this case all that much anymore. It’s a really hard case and I can’t even blame you in the slightest for not wanting anything to do with it anymore.”

“Will you give me a hug?” Louis hugs him tightly, then, and everything feels like it’s going to be just fine.

“So, how was the last exam?” Harry asks, trying to keep his voice at least somewhat enthusiastic as he stands in front of his lecture hall. It had been a terrible last exam, really, but he always asks just in case. Even though he and his assistants had only gotten through grading about half of them, most of them had been Bs or lower, and that wasn’t something Harry really enjoyed seeing.

He’s well aware his class is difficult, but that’s not something he thinks any professor should ever brag about or feel accomplished about, because any subject can be taught well if the teacher cares enough. So, he looks around and sees several students nodding their heads and smiling – a few he expects and a few he’s a little unsure about – and more than enough faces that show exactly how scared they are to get their scores back.

“So, not so good then, just in general? Don’t worry too much. I am going to curve it ten percent. This is a historically very difficult exam, so don’t worry too much if you didn’t do as well as you maybe thought you were going to and as always feel free to come and talk to me if you have any specific concerns you don’t want addressed to the rest of the class,” he says, right as the clock ticks past the hour that they have together. The moment the time changes students are up and out of their seats, some already bolting out of the doors while others are hanging back and waiting for the crowds to die down a little.

But he lingers at his desk for a moment just in case there are any stragglers.

None come, and he’s – oddly – grateful for it.

So, he drives home and finds Louis napping quietly in his bed when he does, and it brings a smile to his face. Louis had gone to the office the first two days that Harry had stopped working on the case, saying he’d give him a little space and time to adjust, but he decided to take Friday as his day to work from home and get what he could done when he was away.

So, finding him in bed isn’t a surprise at all.

Instead, he just crawls into bed beside him and lets himself fall asleep, too. Louis is warm in a way he’s never felt from another person, in the way he just seems to radiate heat from everywhere in his body. He’s the best person Harry has ever cuddled with, both because of that and the way his arms seem to just wrap around him without him even having to be aware it’s happening.

So, as he lays there beside Louis, with the other man’s arms wrapped tightly around his waist, he feels safe, at home, and good in a way he hasn’t in so long. He falls asleep quickly and soundly before he even realizes it.

Harry’s got a record spinning in the corner of the room, his apron tossed over his shoulder as the oven preheats. A bowl of cookie batter sits on the counter, waiting for the fifteen-minute timer to count down so he can start his weekend baking. Sunlight streams in through the windows, through the skylight where Louis helped him trim back the tree branches. Louis went to work for Saturday, but Harry knew he was going to be home within the next few hours, and he thought that cookies would be a nice way to greet him.

“Oh, Saturday sun,” He sings along, swaying his hips just a bit, the little nub of a bun he has his hair tied up into swaying just a bit with his movements.

A humming bird sits at the edge of a feeder he’d put out for the beginning of spring, it’s wings fluttering so fast it looks like a constant whir of motion. Humming along to the record, he grabs a rag and wipes down all the counters once again, making sure they’re entirely spotless. The white is shining again under the beams of light around him when he tosses the rag back into its bucket. His little automatic vacuum whirs around the house before it beeps twice, telling him it’s finished its job and takes itself back to the dock.

The doorbell rings barely a moment later, and he makes his way to the sink to wash his hands.

“Coming!” He calls out, hanging the apron back over its hook before he makes his way over to the door. Louis and Zayn are on the other side of it, Zayn with his hands in his pockets. “Hey, guys. Come in. I’m making cookies.” Three pairs of shoes sit at the front of the door, each wrapped in a plastic bag, but as Louis and Zayn enter, they don’t take their shoes off. “What are you -”

“Harry, turn your oven off. And the music.” A frown flashes over his face before he takes a few steps back.

“Please,” Louis adds, only finally looking him in the eyes. He swallows hard before he goes to the farthest corner of the room and shuts off the record player, and then turns his oven off where it was nearly finished.

“What’s going on? I’m not - I told you I wasn’t going to be doing any more readings today. I need a break.”

“That’s not what this is about, Harry. We - we’ve delivered our profile. And results came back from the lab.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“Harry -” Zayn says, but then he stops himself, teeth scraping over his bottom lip.

The tension in the room is thick and the silence surrounds them completely. There’s dirt from the bottoms of their shoes on his floor, and it’s making him nervous. His mind is running faster than it has in years, swirling in circles of chaos.

“You think it’s me,” Harry says, exhaling. He can’t fully comprehend the depth of the hole in his heart, the way it aches worse than he’s ever felt in his life. “You think it was me,” He repeats again, taking a few steps back from Louis. “You think I did this.” He’s nauseous, suddenly, and it feels like bile is crawling up the back of his throat.

“Harry-” Louis says, biting his lip as he tries to reach out and touch him as if he’s forgotten, as if every moment they’ve spent together before all of this has just been erased from his brain.

It’s just the faintest brush of his fingers against Harry’s hand that sends flashes of images in front of his eyes, a constant stream muddled with red and white flashes.

Not a single one is good. Images of Harry with blood on his hands, images of Harry holding the knives, writing the letters, murdering those girls. A stream of tears rolls down his face, warm against his cheeks even as the images stop.

“Harry Styles,” Zayn says behind him, “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law.” The words slowly tune out of his head as he looks at Louis, as he feels the cold metal of the handcuffs being put on his wrists.  Louis just looks at him blankly as Harry follows Zayn to the black SUV sitting outside of the house, expressionless. Harry thinks that’s what hurts the most, thinks that that’s the part that makes his heart ache so deeply.

Zayn’s hand is gentle on his shoulder, the way it always has been, over their years of friendship, but the bite of metal handcuffs on his wrists tells the truth. The door is opened for him, and he gets into the back without a word, not watching as the door is closed and he’s separated from his best friend and - whatever it was Louis was to him - by the thick sheet of bulletproof glass.

\---

It was a typical start of a day, something that he’d done time and time again without fail, yet something felt different. Something about that single day felt like there was something that was terribly, very wrong.

He’d felt off the entire day, and it didn’t let up, even as he was sitting in math class, trying his best to focus on the calculus problem sets, but his brain just wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t focus on what he needed it to focus on. So he’d raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom, hoping that a short walk around the halls would calm him down, would get his mind into gear to focus for the remaining few hours of classes, of school, of the entire day, before he could just go home and try his best to sleep whatever funk he’d gotten off.

He took the pass as he walked down the hall, going all the way across campus to the farthest bathroom away, just to stretch his legs and get some kind of blood flowing. He took a few deep breaths, squeezes his eyes shut over and over, and splashed some water on his face. It helped calm him down, but it wasn’t enough.

He slowly made his way back to class, but just shy of half way there, he saw Eden, sitting on the floor near her locker. “Eden?” He asked, approaching her with a frown tugging down the corner of his lips.

“Hey, H.”

“You alright?”

“Hm? Yeah. Just. I don’t feel so good, is all.” He sat down beside her, then brought his knees up to his chest in the same way she was doing, and looked at her for a moment. She was pale, looked tired in a way Harry had never seen her look, and another wave of worry washed all through him. “Go back to class, I’m fine. I just had to step out for a little while and get some air.” Her words were almost slurring, then, and it almost seemed like she couldn’t keep her head up right.

“Are you drunk?”

“Harry, please, just, go.” He frowned again, but he didn’t make the motion to leave. He wasn’t going to if she was in a bad state, if she needed him there, if she needed  _ anything.  _ Years had gone on and as each one did, they were inseparable. Told each other everything, stood by each other for everything that could possibly happen, and this wasn’t going to be any different.

“We don’t have to talk, just tell me what’s wrong, okay?”

“Harry, I said leave me the hell alone!” She stood up then, and Harry was quick to follow, ignoring the wound in his heart as he did, and then she was tumbling over. He reached out, catching her just before she could hit the ground, but as their skin brushed against one another, fits of images flashed over his eyes and he couldn’t stop it no matter how much he tried, no matter how hard he squeezed his eyes shut or tried to focus on  _ anything  _ else.

The images were rapidly changing, from pills scattered on the floor to empty bottles of vodka, to a short, constantly rewinding image of Eden taking a full bottle of pills – following it down with another drink of vodka. He feels the pain before he sees it – feels the overwhelming desire to die, to end it, to be free – and it makes bile rise in the back of his throat.

It doesn’t stop.

A constant loop of the image of Eden killing herself plays on a constant loop in his mind, over his eyes, through his brain like worms crawling through his ears, and he can’t stop it. He’s trembling and he feels the cold of the floor against his face before he feels it, the blooming pain in his cheek and through his entire body.

It all hurts.

He doesn’t know where he begins and where the hallucination ends and none of it felt right.

He wasn’t sure how long he was there, or how long he was unresponsive, but when he came back to, he was in a hospital room. He was hooked up to monitors and there were beeps all around him, and he was tied down to the bed with soft, padded cuffs.

“Harry?” His mom asked from beside the bed, and he turned to look at her with a frown.

“Where’s Eden?”

“She’s fine, sweet heart. She said – she said you hurt her, love. She – she said you tackled her.”

“She fell down. She fell down and I caught her and then I – I don’t know. One of my episodes happened.” His mother grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. “I would never, ever hurt Eden. I love her.”

“I know you do, sweetheart. But she said she needs some space, alright? Asked us to keep you away just for a few days.” He turned away as he felt his heart breaking into a million little pieces. He’d finally ruined it all for him and his best friend, finally been deemed too  _ crazy  _ for the one person who he thought would always be a constant in his life to handle anymore.

The doctors increased his medication again, and he felt more tired than he ever had, but they sent him home with another lecture on  _ coping skills  _ and another pamphlet on schizophrenia.

He’d thrown it away in the lobby, just like every other time.

\---

He’s sat at the metal table that he’s been on the other side of time and time again. After being in the room so many times, after seeing so many faces pass through, he almost thinks he should be used to it, should be comfortable in the space. But it feels wrong, being on the side he never thought he’d be on. Zayn had taken the handcuffs off his wrists once he’d sat down, but it doesn’t leave him feeling any less trapped.

Maybe it’s worse, knowing his friends are on the opposite side of the wall of glass, watching his every move as they try and say he’s the one who’s done this.

He’s been sitting in the room for nearly seventeen hours, and he’s exhausted. Zayn had brought him something to eat, with a sad smile on his face, and all he could do was pick at it. Numbness is all he can feel, throughout his entire body, as he knows his closest friends are sitting right on the other side of the glass, thinking he’s the one who’s done all of this.

“Harry,” Shawn finally says as he comes through the door and sits down. He doesn’t know how this is going to play out, how any of this is going to work. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to prove his innocence or convince people who he never thought he’d have to convince that he’s not a killer.

“Shawn, I really, really don’t know what else to say. I didn’t do this. I didn’t.” He sighs, defeated. Resting an arm on the table, he cradles his head in his hand, sighing again. “I still don’t even understand how you’ve all come to that conclusion.”

“Harry, you got sloppy. You were really good at hiding it, at covering it up. Just until Amanda Stall. We profiled an obsessive, controlled man between the age of twenty-three and twenty-eight, highly organized, intelligent.

“A broad profile,” He says, shaking his head. “You can’t possibly have me in custody because of a profile that could easily match Liam just as well as it does me.”

“You fit the profile perfectly.”

“If I was doing this, why would I have been so open about my struggles with my disorder? If this was - if this was really something I was trying to hide? I told you from the beginning!” He’s nearly frantic with it now, the dread and despair filling his chest. The idea of going to prison for something he hasn’t done is terrifying.

“And yet all it took was a fingerprint on the back of her watch.”

“A fingerprint?” He frowns.

“Yes, Harry. Your fingerprint. On the back of the watch left with Amanda Stalls before she was dumped at Acacia Park.”

“I’ve never even been to Acacia Park. I don’t -” He sighs softly, trying his best not to cry, to let himself go. He wants to cry, wants to lose it, wants to show exactly how terrified he is in every way.  “Okay. Fine. So, you all think it was me. What about all the time I’ve spent with you lot? With Zayn? I had Zayn over at my house six times over the last month that these women were being murdered. Then I had my mom over three more times, Louis over even more than that. I was at work two days a week and you profiled your unsub wouldn’t be able to hold a steady job or social life because he’d be so focused on his killing. I’ve had the same job since I graduated, and my social life and sex life are rather fantastic so please tell me how that fits into your profile.” He’s angry now, angry tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.

“You’re smart Harry. We can’t trust that you just don’t know exactly what to say.” The first tear falls then, but he’s quick to wipe it away.

“Get the times of death from the coroner then! Don’t sit me in here for seventeen hours unless you can convince me that I’ve done this because I didn’t do it.” He exhales, shakily. “And I know Louis can’t be in here because of the conflict of interest, but you tell him that if there’s even a shred - even a shred of doubt, somewhere inside of him that I didn’t do this, to keep looking.” He looks at the glass, away from Shawn. “There’s always more.” It’s a private reference, and he doesn’t know for sure if Louis is even listening, but he can only hope he is.

\---

Harry wakes up after a long night of sleeping on the cold metal of the table beneath him.

It’s been twenty-seven hours since he had been put in the little room, and he doesn’t exactly know why that hurts so much. Maybe it’s just because it all settles in so quickly that his best friends in the entire world - his boyfriend - thinks that he’s committed an act so horrible that they can apply the clause that extends the twenty-four hours they’re legally able to hold him unless he’s suspected of committing a serious crime.

It hasn’t fully settled in for him, just yet. Hasn’t completely come to terms in his mind, just because it still feels so outlandish, so impossible, that he can’t absorb it. He can’t imagine that his friends, that the people he knows better than anyone else in the entire world, could possibly thing he’s done this, that he’s tortured and killed ten girls - ten little girls.

Even just thinking about it makes him feel ill, makes him physically feel ill, because he could never imagine so much as hitting a child, let alone ending one’s life. He could never imagine hurting another human being. He’s lived a life of kindness, always done his best to treat everyone around him with the most kindness he can imagine, and yet there are still people that think he could do something like this.

He knows that some of the killers he’s seen put away, some of the world’s most evil people, were seen to be the kindest, that they were seen to be just like him. And perhaps that’s what makes it so horrible. Because of those people, his life filled with kindness and love could be stomped down, could become irrelevant.

He could go to prison for this, he realizes all at once, like a punch in the face.

There’s an extremely high likelihood that he’s going to go to prison for this, that he could be put to death himself for doing something he didn’t do, and no one would ever think twice about it.

He sighs softly, trying to twist out the cricks in his neck, when he hears the door open once again, for the fourth time total since he’d been sat at the horrible metal table.

It’s Zayn.

He’s got a bag from whole foods in his hand and two cups, and he sets them down on the table wordlessly before he takes a seat across from Harry. Then, he takes out two containers, places one in front of himself and passes one over to Harry, along with one of the cups.

Harry looks at him with a quirked eyebrow, lips downturned in a small frown. It’s possibly the strangest he’s ever seen Zayn act, and it’s made even worse that he’s not saying anything. Maybe that should make it better - since that’s something Zayn would do any day, even a day when Harry wasn’t about to be tried for murder. Yet, it still makes his head hurt.

“Sorry if the coffee’s a bit cold. You know how far of a drive it is from town,” Zayn says, finally breaking the silence between them. Harry hasn’t opened his container, even though Zayn’s already started eating, taking a drink of his own coffee.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean. Why are you here? You’re sitting here, eating a meal with me, as if you’re not trying to put me in prison for the rest of my life for committing murders I didn’t do.” His best friend sighs softly, before he sets his fork down and runs a hand through his hair.

“We can’t talk about whether or not I think you did it. Conflict of interest or whatnot. I’m not here to tell you did and I’m not here to listen to you tell me you didn’t.” Harry looks down at the table, frowning. “But, murderer or not, you’re still my best friend. I’m not allowed to be a part of your process, any of this, really, but they can’t stop me from sitting in here and eating a meal with you.” Harry swallows hard, grinds his teeth and tries to blink away the emotional tears in his eyes.

“Thank you,” Is what he settles on instead of his plea to tell his best friend that he really didn’t do this, to please believe him, that if he could give Zayn the ability to see into his mind for a moment he wouldn’t see any of this. He just stays quiet as he opens his container and eats his meal in silence.

It’s not awkward, and Harry knows he can credit that entirely to Zayn. That’s always been something that his friend has been good at - keeping things perfectly civil even in times when they shouldn’t be. When things should be in complete chaos, Zayn is the calm and collected one to bring everyone back down to earth.

So, even as they both finish their meals in silence, it’s not awkward.

There’s no window to look out of, so he can’t even gauge what time that it might be. He thinks that’s the worst part of all of it, how isolated from reality everything feels when he’s trapped inside of a little white box.

The door opens again, this time very suddenly.

“Zayn,” It’s Louis’ voice, and Harry’s stomach does a flip. He looks away from the door, almost instinctively. Almost like he doesn’t want Louis to see him in here like this, even if he knows fully well that Louis is the one that put him in here. “Come out here. It’s urgent.”

Zayn’s quick to get up and go out the door, leaving the mess of trash on the table in front of Harry.

He twitches, looking at it.

He knows it’s his compulsions, in part, that wound him up here. He knows it’s the way he can’t handle certain things and the way he needs some things to be done a very specific way that made him so much as get glanced at as a suspect in this murder, but he can’t help it. He can’t help the way he falls into what he can only assume is Louis and Zayn’s way of showing exactly how much his compulsions control his life. He knows exactly what they’re playing at as he gathers up all of the trash that was left on the table before he stacks it all neatly inside of a bin in the corner of the room.

Only when he does, does the anxiety inside of him dwell, even just in the slightest.

He can imagine how Louis and Zayn and everyone else he knows is standing outside of the glass, watching, taking notes, making sure everything he does inside of the little observation box plays perfectly into their profile. It makes his stomach turn, but he just returns to his seat and sits, feeling just as uneasy as he had since he got there.

\---

Harry had always told his mom exactly what he saw in his visions, and even let her read the small book he kept that documented them. They weren’t private to him. They weren’t something he liked, but all the doctors had said that the more he shared them, the more he normalized his illness, the better he could get, faster. So, he tried his best.

But with the most recent, his mom just frowned and placed a kiss on his forehead, just the same way she always had, the same, patronizing way that said she didn’t believe what he was going through.

It never did stop hurting.

But four days went on and Harry didn’t go back to school, before they got the call.

Eden was dead.

The day Harry had had his vision – she’d gone home and done exactly what he’d seen. Gone home and acted out everything that Harry feared the most. Gone home and done what he’d tried so, so hard to keep her from. The tightness in his chest unwound and it was no longer gradual in the way he fell apart. He fell to the ground as soon as his mother broke the news, his knees giving out beneath him as he hit the shag carpet of the too old floor and felt his heart break all over again.

“Oh, Harry,” His mother had said, and it was that moment, that pivotal moment that changed everything.

Suddenly he wasn’t  _ sick  _ anymore – he had a gift.

Suddenly what he’d been told for years was wrong, was a mystery, made no sense, was scary to others – suddenly it wasn’t wrong anymore. Suddenly everything clicked into place but he didn’t  _ want  _ that. He would rather be sick again and still have his best friend.

He threw up three times into the toilet downstairs.

\---

It feels like days before the door opens again.

Harry’s still got his head down against the metal of the table, and it’s warm from how long his skin has been touched against it.

He thinks he’s almost come to accept this, to accept the cruel reality that sometimes the world chews people up and spits them out, even when they don’t deserve it. After so many hours in here, he’s not sure there’s anything to be done that can prove his innocence, now. He hopes someone is still checking the times of death on the girls, somehow, and proving that it wasn’t him. He hopes someone, somewhere, is on his side and fighting to show that this wasn’t him, that he’s not the monster that so many people seem to think he is.

“Hey,” Louis says as he walks into the room. Harry lifts his head from the table to look at Louis, but their eyes don’t meet.

“Hi,” Harry says in response, unsure of what else he’s supposed to say. He didn’t think Louis would be allowed in the room with him at all, didn’t think he’d get to see him so up close and personal again before he was put behind bars.

“You’re free to go.” The words feel stunted in the room, frozen, as if each syllable is hanging in the air in front of him. “I’m so, so sorry. So sorry, Harry. We know it wasn’t you, now. I’m so sorry.” Harry swallows hard, a wave of anger suddenly swelling up inside of him, spreading through every limb. He stands up wordlessly, teeth clenched and goes to the door.

Zayn opens it for him, and he storms out of the station without a word to anyone, without looking anyone in the eye. He doesn’t want to see anyone, doesn’t want anyone to see him, either. He just wants to go home and never resurface again. Move towns. Restart himself as a person. It’s raining outside when he walks, and he has miles before he’ll be home, but he thinks he needs it, thinks he needs the time to calm down and collect his thoughts before any of this could possibly make sense in his head.

He doesn’t want to know what it was that convinced everyone that he wasn’t guilty. He doesn’t want to know why they wouldn’t listen to him when he said it wasn’t him, doesn’t want to know why he feels such a deep loss in his heart, even if he has his freedom still in front of him. He almost thinks prison would have been a better outcome, so he wouldn’t have had to feel like this.

All he can see is how much Louis had been so certain it was him that he was imagining it. All he can feel is the way Louis was angry, sad, how he had the audacity to feel such a deep-rooted betrayal. He’d gotten all of that from a single touch from Louis, just the briefest, and yet it still plays on a constant, never ending loop in his head.

He gets home after nearly two hours and takes his shoes off right at the door.

There’s no dirt on the floor, not visible, at least, from where Louis and Zayn had come in and not taken their shoes off, but he feels sick with the thought of it. He’s quick to go to the kitchen and start filling a bucket with the hottest water his tap will run, then dumps in as much floor cleaner as he can handle the smell of.

As soon as he’s in is living room, he’s scrubbing at the spot. A single spot. He’s not even sure if either of them had stood in that exact spot, but he can’t stop.

He can hear the voice in his head saying he’s giving in to his compulsions, that he’s not fighting it and showing himself that nothing bad will happen if he doesn’t give in to it, but he still sits there, still scrubs at the spot.

The chemicals burn his skin as the water slips beneath the material of his gloves, rubs against his skin painfully where the chemical is trapped beneath it. He rips the material away and keeps going.

He’s trembling as he does it, shaking, tears forming in his eyes as he keeps going.

It’s not until the bucket is nearly empty and he realizes that he’s sitting in a puddle of water and his hardwood floors are scratched that it’s been hours of doing it.

His hands are cracked raw, bleeding in a few spots, and it stings horribly, but he doesn’t move away.

Instead, he just sits back to rest his back against the wall, then closes his eyes.

He’s not sure how much time has passed when he wakes up again, but the smell of cleaner surrounds him, and he forces himself to stand. His arms ache, but he ignores it as he takes the bucket back to the kitchen and sets it in its proper place, then sets a towel over the still slightly wet spot that he’d somehow managed to fall asleep on.

It’s been years since he’d had such a horrible episode, and the guilt claws at him. Chews on his stomach from the inside with the guilt of not using the coping skills he’d been taught to use, of not trying to change his pattern of thinking in the moment to prevent things like this from happening.

He takes a breath, before he strips himself of the damp clothes and changes into something more comfortable, and then settles himself on his sofa.

The house is painfully empty, and yet everywhere he looks, there’s something that reminds him of Louis. Louis’ things had just slowly migrated into his house over the times he’d come and visit, over the weeks he’d been back in town to find the killer. Over the time that Harry had thought he was falling in love with him.

Louis’ personal phone is still on his coffee table, fully charged, from where he’d left it when they both went down to the station the night before he’d been taken in himself. It almost feels like a snapshot frozen in time, before all of this, before everything seemed to go wrong all at once.

He’s not sure what he’s doing as he reaches for the phone, grabs it, and tosses it across the room.

It shatters into so many pieces that he can’t count them, smashes against the brick as glass and plastic and metal goes flying everywhere.

There’s no room for guilt, and suddenly something Harry’s never felt before it triggered inside of him, and he can’t stop himself. A picture of him and Louis that his mum had taken is hung on the wall, and he tosses that, too. Watches as the glass shatters against the wall.

So many of Louis’ things surround him, so many of his own things that now remind him of him are everywhere, and he’s not sure what he’s doing as he throws it all around, watches everything go flying, all while hot tears are streaming down his face.

He’s never done this, never done anything like this at all, and he doesn’t know how to handle it, doesn’t know how to handle the emotions raging inside of him like a fire. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to regulate something he’s never felt before.

But as he stands in the centre of his living room, surrounded by broken glass, by clothes scattered everywhere, by pictures strewn about, he doesn’t know what he’s done. Doesn’t know how to fix it or how to make everything stop playing in a constant loop in his head that only serves to make him feel like the world is coming to an end.

He grabs a jacket this time, at least, before he’s putting his shoes on again and walking out the door.

It’s dark, pitch black outside around him, and he pulls out his phone only to see that it’s nearly one in the morning.

He’s got more than a dozen missed calls from his mom, and two more from Zayn, but he doesn’t know what he’d say to her, to Zayn, what he’d say to anyone. He doesn’t think there’s anything to be said to any of those around him, doesn’t think there’s any way he could possibly describe exactly what he’s feeling.

Abandoned, maybe.

Alone, for sure.

Betrayed.

He takes a deep breath as he keeps walking. He doesn’t have his gloves on and it’s the first time in years that he’s left the house without them, but he feels like he doesn’t have time to go back, doesn’t have anything worth going back for.

All he needs is a few hours.

A day, maybe, to clear his head.

He keeps walking down the sidewalk, breathing in the humid air from when it had rained earlier, and letting the cool of it around him clear his head. It’s quick, as he walks, that he starts to feel better. It usually is, he knows, when he uses his healthy coping skills, but he almost thinks this time it was forgivable to let that go for a moment, to fall back on those behaviours when he didn’t know what else to do.

Maybe not.

Definitely not.

But what’s done is done, and he knows that it, too, will pass. He has to remember that. Has to remember that all of this will be done and over with before long and that everything will be out of his head before long. Louis will get back on his jet, will stop calling, will stop texting, will stop trying to invade his life any more than he already has, and everything will go back to normal.

He sighs, softly.

The sound of cars on the road beside him is calming, even if it’s late.

The sound of squeaking brakes pulls up beside him, and he doesn’t pass a glance at the car. He already knows who it is, already knows exactly what he wants. “Leave me alone, Louis. I don’t want to hear your apologies. I don’t want to hear it.” But really, Harry just wants to be left alone. There’s not a single person in the world he wants to talk to less than Louis now. He can’t imagine any universe where he would want to talk to Louis after all of this. The sound of a car door opening finally catches his full attention. “Go away! I don’t want to talk!” He says, not shouting, but his voice is trembling.

He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t walk away, either, and that makes more anger simmer inside of Harry, just enough to make him turn around.

Something hard hits him on the head, and everything goes dark.

His head is pounding when he wakes up.

The pain seers behind his eyelids and he groans with it, sighing softly as he opens his eyes. It’s worse than any hangover he’s ever had, the pain of it amplified horribly, all localized at the right of his head and worst right behind his eyes. “Good morning,” A voice says, and that makes Harry twitch. His hands are tied behind his back, so tightly that he thinks his circulation is slowly being cut off. “Took you long enough to wake up, I was starting to get bored.”

Harry can’t see where the voice is coming from, but he thinks it’s somewhere behind him. He turns his head, trying to find the source of it, and instead hears footsteps. It’s the clacking of footsteps that catches his attention, and then there’s a man stood in front of him.

He looks familiar, almost, in the way where Harry’s certain he’s seen him around somewhere, but he doesn’t think he’s ever spoken to him. He’s the type of person that blends in to a crowd so well that he wouldn’t even spare a glance, wouldn’t look his way twice.

“You don’t recognize me?” The man says, the anger clear in his voice.

“I’m sorry - I’m - maybe it’s because of my head. But, no. I don’t,” He says, keeping his voice calm. He knows how important it is, in these situations, to play exactly how the person in front of him wants him to play. If he doesn’t cater exactly to this man’s fantasy - whatever that might be - he’ll be dead. It’s a terrifying feeling.

“Do you even know what anniversary falls this week?!” The man screams, voice bouncing off the walls, making Harry’s head twinge in pain once again. The man is looking him straight in his eyes, like he’s the worst of every human on the planet. “You don’t. You really don’t remember at all, do you?” Harry says nothing, has no idea what he’s supposed to say. “Five days from now is the anniversary of Eden’s death. You claimed to have been her best friend, yet you didn’t stop her killing herself and now you’ve just forgotten about her!?” He’s still shouting, and suddenly there’s a pit of dread deep inside of Harry’s stomach.

“Colin, Colin, I recognize you, okay. I do. You just look a little different now, we’ve both aged in the last fifteen years.” This seems to calm the man down just a bit, but not enough for Harry to feel like he’s safe yet.

He scoffs, a nasty sound that Harry doesn’t think he’s ever heard sound so angry. “At least you can bother to remember how many years it’s been.”

“What’s all this about, Colin? It’s been - it’s been so many years. I miss her, of course I do, but it’s been so long.”

“She doesn’t deserve to be forgotten about. Just like she didn’t deserve you killing her!”

“She killed herself. No one could have stopped that except her.”

“You could have! You said it your goddamn self! In your police statement, you said you saw her doing it before she did it and yet you didn’t so much as bother to call. For hours you let my baby sister suffer. For hours you let her sit there, thinking about killing herself. Then for four days after that, you let her rot away in that ICU room, because you decided not to stop her. You did this. You killed her.”

Four days.

It all clicks, very suddenly, for Harry. Colin killed all those girls. Colin has been the one they’ve been looking for all this time. It feels very suddenly like he can’t breathe, as he realizes exactly how bad of a situation he’s in. His MO the entire time had been killing young girls, but it suddenly makes more sense than he’d ever thought it would.

Eden was fifteen when she killed herself.

All of the girls he’s killed have been so, so close to that age.

He was recreating it.

The logic of it doesn’t make any sense - even if everything he’s saying had all been things that had gone through Harry’s head all those years ago. He doesn’t understand why all of this is surfacing so many years later, but he doesn’t know how to talk him down, now.  He doesn’t understand how his grief is surfacing like this, how it’s come out in a way that he’s decided to kill other girls that are now less than half his age, to recreate something that happened more than a decade ago.

“We should talk about this, yeah? I blamed myself for it for a long time, too, you know? It hurt so much, to lose my best friend. She was my best friend. I loved her, so much. We even said we were gonna get married one day, you know? We were so close.”

“No. No, you don’t get to pretend that you were hurt by this. You killed her!”

“I still leave flowers on her grave, every year, on the anniversary. I’ll never forget about her. I never have. I used to call your mom, sometimes. Make sure she was okay, that she was eating, because I know she forgot to, sometimes, around the anniversary.” He pauses, trying to gauge the reaction he’s getting. “She asked me to stop calling, about seven years ago. She said she didn’t want to think about it anymore, that it was time for everyone to move on and just grieve the loss once and for all.”

“She did not. My mom thought the exact same thing. Said you killed her baby girl.” That stings in Harry’s chest, just like it had the first time she’d said it to him, fifteen years ago, the night that Eden had died.

“Everyone was looking for blame that night, Colin. We all were. None of us wanted to blame Eden, but she did it to herself.” He’d felt the blame for years, felt that he was personally responsible for Eden taking her own life. For years he blamed himself, blamed himself for not checking on her, blamed himself for having the visions at all. It had been years in the making, spent mostly in therapy, before he finally understood that he couldn’t be held accountable for someone’s actions.

“Shut up!” He screams, and then he’s hitting a wall, knocking things onto the floor around them. “You got  to keep living! Got to keep going on your hotshot little life, helping people with your gift that you used to let Eden die!” He sucks in a deep breath, all of those feelings of guilt that he’d felt so strongly when he was a teenager welling up inside of him all over again. It’s irrational - he knows it is, knows that there’s really nothing he could have done, knows that he didn’t know better back then. But he can’t tell Colin that, can’t let him know that he feels even the smallest shred of guilt. He’d only use it against him even further, only justify his cause even more.

“I thought I was sick. I was told so many times that what I was seeing was fake, that I was ill, that I was making it up. I didn’t know.” He says, swallowing back any ounce of pain that tries to resurface from all of those years ago.

“You knew. We all know you knew.”

“I don’t understand this, Colin. I don’t understand. Please explain it to me. Explain what you want from me right now, how you want me to make it better for you.”

“I’m going to kill you, first off. I’m going to make sure you suffer just like Eden did.” Harry lets out a shaky breath. “Are you scared? Because she was. She told me how terrified she was, that night. When she was dying, when the doctors said there was nothing they would do for her.”

Harry doesn’t say that Eden didn’t suffer, that she felt no pain because the doctors made sure she was on a constant stream of medication that kept her comfortable. He doesn’t say anything. Knows that there’s nothing he can say, now, to change Colin’s mind. He’d called every day, when Eden was dying. Had tried to go to the hospital more than once a day, only to be told each time that only family was allowed to be there. He still remembers so, so vividly screaming at the nurses and telling them he was family, that he was her best friend in the whole world, that they were two against the world. It hadn’t been until Eden’s dad had finally come down and asked him to leave, to let them grieve in peace, that he finally left.

“I’m sure you’ve gone and figured it out, now, that I’m the one that killed the other girls,” He says, so nonchalant, as if he’s talking about something as simple as a speeding ticket. It makes the hairs on Harry’s arms stand up. “I was practicing, all this time. Trying to find out the most painful way for someone to die. Of course, I didn’t want those girls to be able to say anything, didn’t want to have to think they were feeling things, but they still had to. Unfortunate.” He shrugs, pacing around the room. “But, I did get to measure their heart rates to see exactly who was in the most pain throughout the entire thing. Who was the most scared.” Harry can so clearly remember the fear he’d felt from Jay Smith when he’d touched her, can remember the sheer terror she’d felt. His heart sinks.  “So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do to you.”

Harry grits his teeth.

He doesn’t know what to say.

There’s nothing to say, to make this end.

None of his friends are going to come and save him, no one is even looking for him. He’s almost certain his friends are aware that he’d want some time to cool off, to have to himself.

“Unfortunately, I still have one more girl to kill before I can move on to you. I didn’t want to take you until tomorrow, but I suppose plans change all the time, shame. But you sure did make it easy on me!” Colin laughs, a dark, sadistic laugh that makes Harry’s stomach coil. “All of your ex friends hate you. They think you’re a killer. Funny, that, huh? Did you like that trick?”

Harry wants to vomit.

“I thought it was really handy, actually. Just had to work a little magic with some tape and magically, Harry Styles’ fingerprint so happens to appear on the back of a watch he’s wiped down perfectly clean at every other crime scene, huh? Just an unfortunate accident that you got caught in the middle of your perfect murder streak.”  

“How’d you get them to let me go, then?” He asks, on exhale.

It’s the first time he’s ever been able to hear a killer’s real, true reasoning. Any other time, it’s always been some fabricated reasoning, something they’ve made up on the spot to try and justify their actions. But right now, in this moment, he knows it’s all real. Even if he’s about to die, it’s still almost fascinating. Hearing exactly what someone is thinking to go through with the one act another human being should never be able to do.

“I dumped another body, of course, you dumbass. I thought you were smarter than that.” He laughs, humorlessly, then. Harry doesn’t understand how someone could act like any of this is funny. How any of this is something to laugh about. “I didn’t want you to go to prison. Just wanted your friends to turn against you, for you to turn against them, so I could keep you here without anyone snooping around.”

But the worst part about it is that Harry knows he’s gotten exactly what he wants.

His mom will be the first to wonder if he’s okay, to go to his house and see the mess he’s made. But he’s been known to fall off the face of the earth for at least a few days. Colin has achieved the ultimate plan. Harry thinks he might be the first he’s ever heard of to truly execute a perfect murder plan, to really get to go through with every part of his plan without so much of a hitch.

“Now, poor Miss Rebecca here, she’s been hanging out with me for almost all four days. So, I’m going to go and take care of her, then I’m going to leave her for your friends to deal with tonight. So they forget about you even more, just like you did Eden. And then, it’s your turn.”

“Don’t kill her. You don’t have to. I’m here, now. Just kill me instead.”

“So noble of you,” Colin says with a snort, rolling his eyes. “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. We’re on my schedule, my time.” Harry grits his teeth again and pulls at the restraints holding him still.

Colin stabs her, a quick puncture to her side, but he knows enough about basic anatomy to know he didn’t hit any vital organs. Tears stream down her face, though, and Harry keep his eye contact with her.

He keeps looking at her, tears welling up in his own eyes, but he hopes he can just communicate that last moment of peace for her, that someone is here with her, on her side.

He has to watch her die, has to watch as her eyes finally flutter closed and the room nearly goes cold with it.

Closing his eyes is the only way he feels like it’s over, for both of them.

“Don’t look so relieved. I’ll be back for you very soon, don’t worry,” Colin says, his voice almost sing-song like. It makes him feel sick in an entirely different way.

Only when both Rebecca and Colin are both gone, does the panic finally settle in his bones. It fills him to the brim, faster than it ever has. He can’t breathe. Can’t feel anything except the overwhelming panic.

And then his phone starts ringing. It’s in his jacket pocket, right across the room, and it’s blaring out Louis’ ringtone.

He’d set it to Footloose just a few days previous, because it was the only song in the movie that Louis sang along to when they watched it together.

He has to listen to it ring, has to listen to more than half of the song, before it finally shuts off. Tears start streaming down his face, then, in full force. He’d thought it was Louis - had thought it was Louis that pulled up beside him. After screaming that he wanted Louis to go away, now all he wants is him right beside him. All he wants is Zayn and Louis and even Liam and Niall to come and tell him that everything is okay. To keep calling him a cheapskate for not buying beer when they all went out to drink. For everyone to pile up in his house again for his baked goods until they’re all warm and content and happy to sit in his living room and watch a movie.

It’s quiet in the room for thirty five more seconds, before the song starts up again.

Louis is calling again.

Harry pulls at the ropes, tries his damn hardest to break free from it, but he doesn’t. It’s too tight.

His phone doesn’t ring a third time, and the silence is deafening.

Colin doesn’t come back in the time it takes for the sun to rise and fall again.

The panic of just being left there to die of dehydration passes through his mind, the thought of being abandoned, left there with no one to ever find out what happened to him passes through his mind more than once during the time that he doesn’t return.

Until he does, and Harry almost wishes that’s what would have happened.

“Miss me?” Colin asks as he walks into the little room.

After hours of looking around, Harry’s decided that he thinks it’s a shed. One of the nice sheds from a hardware store that looks like a tiny version of a house, maybe, but a shed all the same.

“Just let me go, Colin. This isn’t going to bring Eden back. None of this will.”

“You’re right. It isn’t bringing her back. But it’s making the world understand. It’s making everyone understand exactly what it’s like to have someone take the one thing they care the most about in the world away from them, just like you did to me.”

“I didn’t take her away from you!” Harry finally shouts, calm temperment finally breaking.

He can’t handle this anymore. Colin just grins.

“Tell yourself that all you want,” He says, shrugging. The door opens to the little shed, and Colin walks outside, dragging in the end of a garden hose with him when he comes back in. He sets it off, somewhere in the distance behind him that Harry can’t figure out, but his heart starts racing. “Now, it’s nap time.”

“Don’t,” Harry says, watching as he pulls a needle out of a bag. “You don’t have to do this.” His heart is racing in his chest still, pounding so loud it feels like it’s in his ears. Colin doesn’t respond. “I can work with you, help you get out of prison. I can work a deal with the judge for you - help all of this go away. You just have to work with me, for that to happen.” His breathing is fast, as the fear spreads through him.

Colin still says nothing, instead, just sticks the needle right into Harry’s neck and pushes hard on the syringe end, pushing the liquid inside right into him.

Nothing happens at first, but Colin is confident enough to undo the restraints on his wrists and Harry is faster to stand.

Only to fall over as soon as he takes two steps.

Harry fights it.

He tries.

His limbs are heavy and his eyes are watering. Only his eyes can move, after a moment, and his eyelids are so, so heavy. Everything feels like it’s spinning, yet all the same he’s hyper focused. Every detail all around him feels like it’s in stunning clarity, like he’s never seen anything so clearly.

He knows he’s about to die, and maybe that’s the worst of it, or maybe the worst of it is still that all of his friends are gone and there won’t be anyone left to tell anyone he didn’t hurt anyone. No one will be there to make sure everyone knows that he didn’t do any of this, that his death wasn’t just an unfortunate side effect of being evil. That he didn’t deserve this. That his mom doesn’t deserve to have to bury him before she dies, that she doesn’t deserve to lose a husband and a son in the same calendar year.

“Stop,” He thinks he says, but the sound never reaches his ears. His mouth doesn’t move, even if the words feel like they’re right there, fighting to come out. A grunt comes out in their place, and it’s not long before his head falls forward, his muscles not working to support it anymore. His nose feels stuffed up, and as a few tears finally fall on their own accord down his cheeks, they mix with snot before falling in little circle droplets on his jeans.

He can hear the words in the room echoing around, and he’s sure that he’s being spoken to, but none of the words can be made out. It all sounds a little bit like ringing, like a constant stream of a whistle being blown in his ears.

And that’s when he touches him.

Touches him, just to grab him, drag him across the floor with his hands still bound.

He’s not entirely sure how he went so long without doing it - maybe it was intentional, or maybe he knew exactly how much it would hurt him, to see his own death before it happens.

He’s read novels of people discussing if it would be better to know when you were going to die or not, before it happens. If knowing a timeline before your death is better or if it only creates more panic, and he suddenly realizes how very wrong he was, thinking it would be better to know. Panic courses through him, adrenaline following it, until all of his useless muscles are burning with it. His fingertips are tingling and his heart is pounding. His stomach is in knots - and his eyes finally fall closed. He can’t feel it - can’t feel how bad he can imagine it’s going to hurt - but he can see himself, submerged in a shallow tub of water, struggling, eyes wide open as he tries to fight it.

He can’t breathe, and he’s not even underwater yet.

He sees it before he feels it, but it’s fast and in quick succession.

The water is ice cold against his skin, and he’s just sitting in it for a moment, body shivering on it’s own. He’s pushed down just enough that he can feel the water level climbing, can hear the water running somewhere, can feel the motion of it.

Fear doesn’t even begin to describe it, doesn’t even touch the surface of everything he feels in that moment. He doesn’t know how to think, doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if there’s anything he possibly can do. The water level climbs fast, before long it’s over his lips, so close that he can smell the faintest traces of chemicals that have long since tainted the town’s drinking water.

He opens his eyes.

It’s not exactly something he meant to do, but he can’t help it. Like he can’t handle seeing the darkness as the last thing he’ll ever see.

And then he takes a deep breath.

It’s another thing he can’t help but do - fight the inevitable. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

He doesn’t even blink, just stares at the wall in front of him, the pristine white tile as his bottom lip trembles, as everything inside of him tries to fight to no avail against whatever was in that drug that keeps him so still.

Dear Lord, I apologize for all my sins, I repent anything -

He takes a breath in the middle of his thought, in the middle of something he hasn’t done since he was a child.

It burns, everything burns, everything hurts, everything hurts, and then it goes black.

\---

It’s September when Harry finds himself laying on the side of the road.

He’s barefoot, and the ground underneath his feet is damp and cold with the early winter snow. Some of the snow around him is red with blood, and as he grabs his phone and flicks the flashlight on, he sees the glass shards beneath his feet, cuts and shreds of skin still bleeding.

Three weeks had gone by since the day Eden died, yet it still felt like he was seeing it, seeing her, over and over again like a continuous loop that would never stop. A vicious playback that went on repeat in front of his eyes no matter how much he screamed, no matter how much he cried and begged God to make them go away.

No matter what he did, she was still there.

Somewhere behind him, he could smell smoke. Something was burning; He could even feel the heat from some kind of fire, but still all he could see were flashbulb images of Eden.

“Are you okay, sir?” Another female voice asked, but he couldn’t make her out. He blinked, and finally for the first time his vision seemed to work properly, like he could see something that wasn’t  _ her. _

“Where am I?” He asks as a few hands grab him, lift him up and get him to an ambulance. He hears voices around him, but they sound more muddled than anything, the words stringing together with a whistling ring. “Where am I?” He feels himself asking again and someone in a blue uniform is laying him back against a bed, then he’s pushed into the back of an ambulance.

“You’re okay, sir.” He looks over from where he’s laid out on the gurney before he’s placed in the back of an ambulance, only to see his car up in flames, smashed against the side of a tree.

His mom met him at the hospital again, and she held his hand as they put a cast on his leg, and things still weren’t alright, but perhaps, they were more alright than they had been in a long time.

“I believe you, my sweet boy, I believe you. I’m so so sorry I didn’t, for so long. I’m so sorry.”

He exhaled, and it felt like the first time he ever had.

\---

He wakes with a gasp.

He coughs, rolls over onto his side and chokes out a mouthful of water, and keeps coughing. It feels like he’s still drowning, like he’s still unable to bring any air into his lungs as he coughs. It hurts - it hurts worse than anything he’s ever felt in his life. It burns and aches all the same, like something’s on fire inside of him.

“I was worried there for a minute,” Colin’s voice says. “Thought you wouldn’t wake up from that one. Can’t have you actually dying before we’ve had all our fun, now can we?” Harry coughs again, then squeezes his eyes shut. Even now that he’s not submerged in the water, now that he’s surrounded only by the air in the room, he still feels like he can’t breathe, like there’s not enough air to keep him going. He wastes no time before he’s tying Harry’s hands back behind his back, then leaving him there, laying on his stomach.

His throat burns with it, burns from the water that had replaced the air, and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he can handle this.

All he can do is look down at the floor, and he’s not sure how much time passes. Time doesn’t feel real laying there, shivering as the wind comes in through the opened windows. None of it feels real.

He thinks he sees the light again, and then more darkness, between drifting in and out of sleep.

But when he wakes again, he can move. Just the tips of his fingers at first, just enough to remind himself that he is still alive, that he hasn’t given up just yet.

He opens his eyes again and there’s light streaming in from somewhere, and he hears footsteps. His heart starts pounding in his chest.

“Good morning!” Colin chips as he walks in once again, and Harry squeezes his eyes shut. It’s probably not going to be a good morning at all. The sound of water running again has his heart pounding, has his breath already picking up, and he’s scared. It’s awful - terrible - mostly because he knows thats what Colin wants, that that’s his end goal. He wants Harry to be afraid, to play into his game of sick revenge.

“You can still end this,” He says, ignoring the pain in his throat from talking, “Still can let me go, and we can pretend none of this happened.”

With a foot, Colin kicks him over so he’s laying on his back, hands uncomfortably squashed beneath him. He looks the man in his eyes, only to watch him glare.

“I’m going to do what I did yesterday twice today. It took the other girl - don’t remember her name, now - four times before she died. I’m assuming it’ll take a few more for you.”

“Just stop this now, you aren’t getting anything out of it!”

“Oh, I’m getting plenty out of it.” He’s grinning when he says it, and it makes Harry’s stomach twist with nausea. Through the open door, suddenly, Harry hears voices. “Fuck! Be quiet!” Colin whispers, and then there are more steps, sounding like they’re running, and then he’s alone again. The water is still running and his heart is still pounding, and all he can do is squeeze his eyes shut and hope it’s someone who’s going to get him out of this.

He hears more footsteps and only opens his eyes slightly, just enough to see the beams of flashlights in the room. “Clear!” Louis’ voice shouts before he’s running over to Harry, kneeling beside him. Harry’s still shaking, trembling from the cold, but seeing Louis makes everything feel like it’s going to be alright, makes it feel like everything is going to end just fine. “Call the medics!” Louis says again, and Harry lets his eyes fall shut again. Louis undoes the ropes around his wrists and ankles, using his shirt as a barrier between their skin to keep from touching him.

He’s tired.

So, so tired.

But Louis is here, now, and everything’s going to be just fine.

“Love, stay awake for me, okay? Stay awake. You’ve gotta keep your eyes open.” Harry can only give a groan in response, but he forces his eyes open again, just enough to see the beautiful blue of Louis’.

“Can you -” He finally chokes out, through the pain in his throat. “Something nice. Think of something nice, and touch me.” Something painful flashes in Louis’ eyes, but he closes them for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then he intertwines their fingers together.

It’s instant, seeing everything that makes up Louis’ happy place.

With how long he holds Louis’ hand, squeezing it so tight he thinks it might be hurting him, he sees everything so clearly, so vividly. Little snippets of Louis’ little siblings, of his dog, of him driving down the road and singing along to his favorite song. He sees snippets of the two of them having a night in together, of the night they’d play fought and tossed popcorn at each other. He sees the group of them laughing at one of Harry’s jokes that was absolutely not funny at all.

“I’m so, so sorry Harry. I’m so sorry,” Louis finally says, “I never meant for any of this. We - we fell exactly into the trap he set for us and you got hurt by it and I can never forgive myself for that.” Harry just reaches up and places a finger over Louis’ lips and squeezes his hand harder.

He hopes it conveys the love he feels as strongly as he wants it to.

He’s dozing in and out of consciousness as he’s carried to an ambulance by a few paramedics that he thinks he would recognize if he could think clearly. His mind is almost entirely blank as the scenery in front of him changes from the bright blue sky to the top of the ambulance, followed by the noise of the doors shutting.

Louis hadn’t let go of his hand the entire time that they were in the building alone, until he was nearly forcibly ripped away for Harry to be looked at. But as soon as they’re enclosed into the little vehicle, Louis’ hand finds his own again. The soft material of what he recognizes as his own glove is on Louis’ hand, keeping him from having to see the visions that Louis knows keep him from sleeping, and he exhales softly.

Harry lets his eyes fall all the way closed, free from anything except a peaceful sleep.

“You gotta stay with me Haz, okay? You have to. I love you so much I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.” He’s almost certain Louis thinks he’s sleeping, thinks he can’t hear him or that he can’t process the words well enough to make out what he’s saying. And perhaps, he thinks, that’s the only reason that he’s saying it.

Even if Louis had never said it out loud, it was so clear that he was afraid to love Harry.

Something had happened to him that made him so terrified of losing the love, that he was too afraid to ever embrace it at all. But now it all made sense. Even if Louis had never said that he loved him and it had only managed to break Harry’s heart just a little more each time that he didn’t, now it made sense.

It had been the same way all along that Harry had initially done. The same little mentions of safety, of happiness, of warmth and comfort that all added up to discreet declarations of Louis’ love. But only now, since the threat of losing each other had become a plausible reality, something that wasn’t just a threat or a worry, Louis could say it out loud.

He squeezes Louis’ hand tighter, using every last ounce of his strength, before he mumbles out an easy, “I love you, too.”

His throat burns with every syllable and his head feels like it cracks open when he speaks, yet a weight is lifted off of him all the same. The weight of holding such an intense feeling inside of him for so long is suddenly gone, and his heart feels like it beats a little stronger. He can’t open his eyes to see Louis’ reaction, but he doesn’t need to. The constant warmth of his hand, the simple thoughtful gesture of him having put a glove on before touching him – it’s all enough.

It’s finally, finally enough.

 

 

 

**+EPILOGUE**

There’s nothing left to be said except the explanation, as Harry stares the man in his face.

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting, isn’t sure what more he wants from the man who’s committed the so eternal act of murder not once, not twice, but eleven times. Eleven times too many all while being one time too few to see the end game that the man was playing at.

The two of them say nothing, but rather sit in a stunted silence Harry doesn’t think could ever be replicated.

“I hope you get the help you need,” Harry says, nodding just once in acknowledgement. Then he gets up, takes the case file with him, and walks away.

He doesn’t look back.

 

They left Twin Lakes the day the case ended and never once did they look back. 

In the clouds outside of the jet windows, there were hues of the sun set. Louis had slept quietly beside Harry for the entire ride, and things had felt normal for the first time in longer than Harry thought possible. 

On his lap sat the file for the Midnight Murder cases, a stamp over the title that read  _ solved.  _

Harry tucked the watch that had been placed on his own wrist by the killer deeper into his pocket and closed his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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**Author's Note:**

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